Everyone's welcome at bilingual beauty salon
Everyone's welcome at bilingual beauty salon
Imagen finds downtown construction to be a help
MOSES LAKE — When it came to designing the window for the new business, Estella Segura knew she wanted to have the Spanish language on the glass.
It's not that the Moses Lake resident, who opened Imagen Salon De Belleza on Ash Street about a month ago with her partners, Yoceida Garcia of Othello and Delma Gomez of Royal City, wanted her business to cater entirely to a Hispanic clientele.
But she did want to be sure potential customers knew everyone was welcome at the bilingual business.
"When we put the sign out there, I said, 'We're going to put it in big letters in Spanish,'" she said. "We're here to serve everyone. It's just that most of the Hispanic people sometimes hold themselves from going into a business because there's not a person that understands their language, and we're here to help them, to understand what they want, their needs."
Segura, Garcia and Gomez met in a local beauty school, and before long, came up with a plan for their own business, a full-service beauty salon.
"I think that we're pretty much alike as far as attitude, friendly," Segura said. "We met there, we got along."
"We clicked pretty good," Garcia agreed.
As soon as they graduated, about three months ago, the trio started obtaining a space and entered the permitting and licensing process.
"It's not easy to own a business, especially to new people like us," Garcia said.
Segura said she had been a farm worker a while ago, and she wanted to develop better skills and have her own business. Her original plan was to pursue a career in business management, and not work in a salon, she said, but operating the business will help develop those skills.
The partners built up a customer base while in school, Garcia continued.
"They would tell us, 'We would like to have a beautician, like a Mexican place, we can go and we know you're going to speak Spanish to us,'" she said. "That's one of the needs that a lot of Mexicans wanted, a person so they could speak Spanish."
The operation is open to everyone, Garcia added.
Another chief reason to go into the business was the fact that the grads wanted to be their own bosses and work their own hours, Garcia added.
"I love doing hair, that's my number one issue," she said of how she got started in her field of work, remembering with a laugh that she began cutting her sister's hair when she was 13 years old. "I really love being with people and meeting new people. I'm very outgoing, just friendly and I love to do makeovers."
In particular, Garcia said, she loves to do highlights and coloring. Her focus is hair, she said.
"People come in and they look sometimes sad, because their hair, and it's just a big change, and when it's all done, you can see their smile or you can see their reaction," she said. "It's a big makeover. If you give them a pedicure, it feels good, but they still take their same feet."
Consumer reaction has been positive since opening, Garcia noted, pointing to a recent day when the shop didn't close until 9:30 p.m.
"That was a big deal to us," she said with a laugh. "We can't even get over it."
Construction work downtown has been a help for the new business.
"People try to come through here, and it's closed, and then they see the sign," Garcia said with a laugh. "This construction is actually helping us."
Both Segura and Garcia would like to see the business expand.
"I would like it to pick up, I would like it to be bigger, move on, get a bigger place, make it successful," Segura said.
It is one of Segura's goals to ultimately offer a beauty school of her own.
"There's always a barrier because they think that they don't know English, they can't go to school for whatever reason," she said.
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