As a company, we pride ourselves on creating careers that our stylists love and doing work they are passionate about, all while earning competitive wages and comprehensive benefits. We know that when our stylists are cared for, our customers are also cared for. We are committed to controlling costs, but rising healthcare premiums and sustainability costs are making it difficult to provide our team with essential benefits without impacting pricing. To address this, we will implement a $5 Health and Eco service charge on November 1st. This charge will help us continue providing our team with the benefits they deserve while minimizing the impact on pricing. We understand that everyone faces rising costs, and we appreciate your support and understanding. You, our customers, mean the world to us, and we hope you continue choosing our team to care for you and your hair.
HEALTH CARE
Health insurance is not common among salon companies. We know how important it is to our team to have easy access and help paying for this essential benefit. 5 years ago we brought on Kaiser and offered it to our team. We made tough budgetary decisions to bring it to life. Since many of our staff are part-time, we even lowered the required hours so more of our team could have access. It was an easy decision to make but a costly one to implement.
Everyone has seen the cost of Health Care rise and the changes we made worked until this year. Our costs have increased by almost 60% in the last 4 years. Those increases have pushed us to again make tough decisions with our budget and pricing.
SUSTAINABILITY
We have been making concerted efforts to become more sustainable through a variety of means. We were recently featured in a trade publication, Estitica, for our work. The article can be read HERE. We believe in looking for local solutions first and have succeeded in this endeavor. Here is a list of the solutions we currently have in place:
- Metal recycling
- We use aluminum foil in many of our lightening processes. Additionally, our hair color comes in metal tubes. By recycling these items, we reduce landfills by an estimated 3640 lbs of metal each year. We found a local solution and do metal drop-offs multiple times a month.
- Hair composting
- We cut so much hair! And it can be composted. We are talking about 5 full garbage bags of hair every single day.
- Vish Color Waist management
- Our color scale prevents color waist by tracking your formulas and ensuring we are only mixing what we need for your service. An additional benefit is we only charge you for what we use.
- Safe product and color disposal
- No matter how diligent our team is using the Vish scales there is color left over sometimes and we want to dispose of it safely. We haven’t found a local solution for this but have partnered with SalonCycle to handle it for us.
- Water Reduction
- Everyone loves a shampoo and scalp massage! We put your shower bill to shame. We have been experimenting with different water reduction shower heads to reduce our water consumption by 20 to 40%.
- Hard to recycle items
- Ridwell has created an amazing system for us to recycle all sorts of interesting things from Lightbulbs to plastic caps.
- Electricity Reduction
- We have transitioned to low-energy LED’s in all 3 of our salons. These bulbs also last longer than traditional fluorescent and incandescent bulbs reducing waste.
- Lead Certified Stations
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- We have had to remodel our salons and have chosen a designer that builds LEED-certified cabinetry. That means our stations, color bar, and front desk have the smallest impact on the environment possible.
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- More to come
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- Our goal is to implement at least 2 new sustainability initiatives each year. Big or small every strategy adds up to make a difference.
OUR MISSION
Our goal from the outset was to create a company that would provide our team with a real career, one where our staff could fulfill three goals.
- Do work they love on guests like you.
- Build financial security and long-term freedom.
- Have a balanced work-life ratio.
My family has been in the beauty industry for four generations. We have witnessed the power of our industry to transform people’s lives. The foundation of our industry is the service providers and the work they do to help guests feel and look their best. My family has wonderful examples, such as my great-grandmother, who earned a similar income to a doctor during the Great Depression. Or my mother, who was able to raise two boys on her own until she met my father and had my brother and me. We have seen our Annastasia staff be able to balance their careers with their family obligations. We are passionate about our industry, our work, and achieving these goals.
We could not accomplish any of this without you. By caring for our staff’s careers, we free them to care for you. Over the last 17 years, as we have brought this vision to life, we have seen what our team is capable of when they are achieving these goals. They spend more time refining their skills, they have more energy to be present with you, they respond to messages on their off hours, they think about you, they learn from their mistakes, and are committed to creating the best experience possible for you, our guests. It is said that most people would rather confide in their stylist than their doctor. This is a relationship business, and when our team has the safety and security they need, they build better relationships and serve you better.
My hope is that you continue to choose our stylists to fulfill your hair dreams. I hope that the careers we build for our staff are why you choose us. I promise we will keep caring for them and in return, they will create an exceptional experience for you.
Luke Huffstutter
Founder
