Photograph by Buffy Goodman
In 1995, an Edmonton hair salon ad campaign convinced me to swap a foot of bland tresses for a razor-sharp diagonal bob. I wasn’t alone. Those billboards – real people, primped with edgy cuts and polished with spa services – spoke to a small city longing for big-city style. The architect of the campaign was the salon’s proprietor, an energetic, entrepreneurial platinum blonde (not her real colour) named Eveline Charles. Today her Eveline Charles Salons-Spas are a western Canadian institution, spanning nine locations, a line of products and a school, not to mention Beauty MD, a cosmetic dermatology clinic. But Charles didn’t roll in from New York or Toronto. She came from a tiny northern Alberta town that, before she left, considered honey its best export. _Natasha Mekhail
Falher. Nobody pronounces it correctly. It’s Fa-lair. Growing up there, I had an aunt who owned the hardware store, the grocery store and the theatre. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked for her. I would watch her and think, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” At school, I was always getting kicked out of class and sitting in the hallway dreaming of what my business would look like.
I finished high school around the time the town’s salon went up for sale. I already cut all my cousins’ and brothers’ hair – all the same way – so I went to beauty school and came back to Falher to work. My business grew so much in five years that I was pulling in people from 100 miles away. I decided to move to the city and do more.
But just to show you how small-town I still was: in St. Albert, north of Edmonton, there were all these beautiful two-storey houses going up. I thought, “Wow, you must have to be married to own one of those.”
See, everybody thinks you’ve got to start at the top. You don’t. Everyone has a path. I worked from seven in the morning to 10 at night. Whenever a customer wanted to come, I was there. After a year, I bought myself one of those houses.
A decade later, my staff and I were re-branding as EvelineCharles (from Bianco Nero) and opening our first spa. We decided to run things like a big corporation. The ad agency giggled when this little salon approached them for billboards. But we weren’t just advertising a thing, we were advertising a lifestyle. It deserved a big campaign.
I opened my second store, this massive Taj Mahal-sized place, in West Edmonton Mall. I had to hire 60 employees and we were three months late in opening. Just about killed us. But that’s when we created the systems, structure and training manuals that let us multiply our business. It’s also when I stopped cutting hair to really head up the company.
At our academy, we try to dispel the myth that “if you aren’t good in school, be a hairdresser.” Students take business and goal planning. I didn’t have those classes, but I feel like I’ve earned an MBA from everything I’ve experienced. Business always points you in the direction you need to go next. If I could give one piece of advice to that girl sitting in the school hallway in Falher, it would be, “Dream bigger.” U
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Thank-you Eveline for guiding my two beautiful daughters Frankie-Lee and Jamie-Lee Doran, in their choosen field of Hairstylists.
I love Eveline. She’s incredible.