Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Marsh
Jessica , we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I knew I always wanted to be a cosmetologist so I started taking classes in high school at my local high school. By the time I graduated in 2008 I had over half of my cosmetology hours completed. I took a month off and started up in July at Tennessee school of beauty. I graduated beauty in December of that same year 2008. I did some extra color& extension classes for the next couple months while I waited to take my state boards and then I started at the JCPenney salon in Farragut in March of 2009. I worked at the JCPenney salon for 10 years when Covid hit. They sent us home in March of 2020 and I was out of work until May of 2020. JCPenney wasn’t giving us any idea of when they were going to let us come back into the salon to work. I called up one of my best friends whom I had worked with for 10 years at JCPenney (Steven Stevens ) and asked him if he wanted to go out on his own with me. We had talked about opening a salon down the road but going through Covid had pushed things into motion faster. We decided to leave JCPenney and open a salon suite of our own. At the time we felt like it would make our clients more comfortable and at ease to be in a space with less people. We also were tired of waiting on JCPenney to give us an answer as to when we could return to work. We were their top producers there so it was super stressful hearing from clients everyday as to when we would be able to return to work. We searched in the area and found a window suite at sola salon studios over in turkey creek. So on Friday the 13th of May 2020 we passed our state board inspection and opened S& J Studio865 . We quickly learned that our space we had at the time was way too small for us and our clients so we started there and one of our salon centric sales reps. Had told me that Luna boutique suites was expanding over in the Appalachian log home cabins over in Farragut. We went and met with the owner Ashley Adcock and told her what we were looking for square footage wise and worked it out with her. We were able to pick the blue print and layout and square footage of our room. So in 2021 of October we left sola and made Luna boutique suites our new home. We’ve been there since then, we will celebrate our 5 year salon anniversary this year and we are so grateful to the support and loyalty of all of our clients!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Covid was a huge struggle for us, the not knowing of can we do this? , will our clients feel comfortable coming back to the salon?. How do we run a business?. We’ve learned and grown so much and I think both of us are so overwhelmed by how well our business is doing and of the support and loyalty of our clients. Running a business is a never ending task, you work all the time. We wear a lot of different hats not only as a hairdresser, but as a therapist, a manager, a cleaner, doing inventory, ordering supplies, doing finances. I’d say learning to wear all those different hats and then to still give our clients that personal hair experience that we were use to doing was some of those hard challenges. We strive to do continuous education every year, that’s not required through the state but we make it a point to do it every year to stay up to date on all the new and upcoming haircare trends.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about S&J Studio865?
We are a 2 partner salon. We do dimensional color, balayage, haircut and extensions. We sell all of tho e best haircare product lines and we also sell farmhouse fresh products as well. We strive to give our clients the best in person experience everytime they are in our chair. We mostly gain our clients by word of mouth. We’ve both been in hair world industry for 16+ years. We stay in the know by taking continuous educational classes every year including, masters of balyage, BELLAMI professional haircare extensions, L’Oréal classes, matrix classes, summit and more.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I would say for Steven he used to be a radio DJ host before hair and used to do MMA fighting.
I’m pretty creative (Jess) I like to decorate home and I like to paint.
Pricing:
- Jessmarsh.glossgenius.com
- Stevenstevens.glossgenius.com
- We run monthly salon specials for products and occasionally services deals
- We supply gift cards
Contact Info:
- Website: Jessmarsh.glossgenius.com Stevenstevens.glossgenius.com
- Instagram: @jessmarshstylist @stevenstevenshair
- Facebook: Jessica Marsh Steven Stevens
