Looking good

MOSES LAKE — It takes a lot of training to make people look their best.

“(A license to do) nails is 600 hours (of instruction),” said Institute of Beauty Professionals owner and instructor Nicholas Harle. “Cosmetology is 1,640 hours, barbering is 1,000, hair design is 1,440 and aesthetics is 750.”

IBP takes its own private students and also serves the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center’s cosmetology program, Harle said. Those students spend 2 1/2 hours a day at IBP and earn credits in lab science, technical science, first aid and fine arts, he said. There were 61 CBTECH students at IBP last year, he said, and there are about 25 full-time students.

The students learn more than just how to wield a pair of scissors, Harle said. They study things like human anatomy, safe handling of some pretty potent chemicals and how to formulate hair color, which involves a lot of math, he said.

“They also have to learn about business,” he said. “They learn soft skills: (projecting a) professional image, communicating for success.”

The students track their own hours and send the forms to the state, he said.

Their employment prospects are good once they finish, Harle said. 

“Barbering is a hot commodity right now,” he said. “It fades out and comes back about every six years. Aesthetics is a hot commodity too, with eyelash extensions and brow laminations and eyelash lifts. A set of nails: in the Tri-Cities I know someone who charges about $185 a set. When I was working in the industry before I became an instructor, I was making $400,000 a year.”

Harle cut the ribbon on the school Tuesday, but he’s actually been open since March of last year, he said. Before that the school was known as Char-Glo School of Beauty, which his grandparents Charles and Gloria Determan had opened in 1979. The name was changed for legal reasons after Charles Determan passed away in 2025, Harle said.

Harle grew up in the beauty school, said his mom, Charlene Fuichs, who serves as IBP’s chief operating officer.

“He started at the age of 15,” Fuchs said. “He went through the CBTECH (cosmetology) program, graduated high school, got his cosmetology license and proceeded to move forward with his teaching.”

Becoming licensed as an instructor took another 500 hours of training, Harle said, and he also earned a degree in vocational teaching from Central Washington University.

“Education is a lot of work, and it’s continuous,” he said. “Either you’re learning with the students or you’re learning outside how to keep the students motivated and encouraged in the field they want to be in.”

IBP offers haircuts, coloring and other services to the public, in order to let the students get some training on real customers, who get the service at discounted prices.

“Most of the time they can just walk in and get the service,” Harle said. “They don’t have to wait too long.”

    Institute of Beauty Professionals owner and instructor Nicholas Harle shows a couple of the practice heads IBP students use to learn proper hair-cutting and shaving techniques.
  

    An important part of the instruction at IBP is safely handling some very potent chemicals, owner and instructor Nicholas Harle said.