Washington - Every three
weeks or so, a black, custom-outfitted recreational vehicle rumbles into a
cul-de-sac in Alexandria.
The neighbors pour out of their homes to greet it.
"It's kind of like the ice cream truck," said Mary
Beth Buchholz, who lives on the tree-lined street. "All the kids come
running." Grown-ups, too.
The RV pulls up to the curb, the driver's door swings open
and out steps Rubie Williams, entrepreneur and owner of Hair Nirvana, the
mobile hair salon that delivers her to her 100-plus customers all over the
Washington region. It's her answer to the era of on-demand services.
"It's catering," said Williams, 46, who has been
styling hair for a quarter century. "I'm two years into this mobile
business, and it is a learning process. I love the travelling. It gets me
publicity."
There isn't a ton of money at stake here, but there is a
lesson for entrepreneurs big and small: Recognise a problem, come up with a
solution, and hustle until the world beats a path to your door. (In this case,
a salon on wheels.)
Williams satisfied both a customer demand and a common
desire among most small-business owners: independence. She was also tired of
forking over rent and/or a chunk of each haircut to a salon owner or a
landlord.
"I don't like when people tell me what to do," the
resourceful entrepreneur said. (Join the club, I thought to myself.)
Unlike most of us wage-earners, Williams went out and did
something about it. Without being too dramatic, she went after her dream.
After more than two decades living on commissions and paying
rent to salons (something she still does), Williams in 2015 mustered the
courage, tapped her savings account for $31 000 and bought a used RV.
The vehicle was cheap: $6 000. The refurbishment was not. It
cost her around $25 000 to outfit her mobile money-earner with water tanks, a
generator, hair-dryers, sinks, shelves and chairs - everything that goes with a
salon.
"It was difficult in the beginning," she said. For
one thing, she needed zoning from the city of Alexandria, where she lives. She
worked with the city's zoning manager, who helped adapt a zoning code covering
her vehicular business.
"If I knew what I know now, I would have done it a long
time ago," she said.
That's because she keeps all the money from her jobs in the
RV. She doesn't have to share those haircut fees with a salon owner. "It's
a blessing," she said of her motorised salon. Using it three days a week
helped boost her income from $60 000 to $72 000.
Conventional way
Williams still runs a portion of her styling business the
conventional way, renting space in a salon off Duke Street in Alexandria. She
pays $300 to $400 a week for the spot, using it from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on
Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
She revs up the RV for its rounds on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
cutting hair from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. And on Sundays starting in May, she will
motor to a farmers market, where she will serve clients from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
She also tries to squeeze in one wedding party a month.
Williams said she goes anywhere in Virginia and Maryland.
The truck does not yet travel to the District of Columbia for insurance
reasons. The nice thing about the hair business is its recurring revenue: Hair
never stops growing.
The more efficiently and cheaply you can tend to clients'
hair, the more you can earn. That's where the truck comes in. Williams uses it
to employ a hub-and-spoke strategy: She parks in one place and the customers -
most of who are in
Alexandria, Woodbridge and Arlington - come to her.
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She'll park near Marymount University in Arlington or in a neighborhood
like Buchholz's, where nine or ten customers can stream in over several hours,
which saves on inefficient long-distance schlepping from house to house.
Williams said she can get up to 13 walk-ins at the Sunday farmers market,
earning hundreds of dollars depending on the customers' needs.
Her prices run the gamut. A man getting his beard trimmed
pays $17. It's $30 to $40 for a men's shampoo and haircut, and $45 to $60 for
women. Prices run all the way up to $205 for a keratin treatment and $260 for
"weave-ins."
Williams likes cutting hair, but a lot of what she does is
listening. Some professors would call that a "stick" business because
it keeps the customers coming back.
"We are like therapists . . . like healers to our
clients," she said. "They come and share and we give them positive
input. For the most part, we have conversations about life in general."
Customers like Buchholz love the flexibility. "I had several
friends that were her clients," said Buchholz, who started patronising
Williams before the mobile salon rode into the picture. "Unlike many
beauticians, she worked on Mondays."
Williams has been cutting hair since graduating from Lake
Braddock High School in 1988. Her father ran his own car-repair business in
Falls Church. Her mother has had her own housecleaning business. Both instilled
the entrepreneurship bug in her.
"They figured out that instead of making other people
rich, just put the money in your own pocket," she said.
Williams started out at Hair Cattery, where she earned a $4
commission (50 percent) on every $8 haircut. It was a slog, but she eventually
pushed her income to $32 000 a year before moving to another salon in the same
shopping center that charged more per haircut, which meant that her 50 percent
commission went up.
Williams learned some important business lessons early on,
such as convincing people that you care what they think of you. That meant
looking the part.
"I was stylish and very professional," she said.
"When you look professional, you look like you know what you are doing.
You are comfortable. And it gives people confidence in you."
The RV came of necessity. One of her clients asked whether
she would drive to her house once a month in rural Virginia and cut her hair. Williams
would pile into her Infiniti, drive out and charge about $110. Sometimes, the
woman's sister-in-law and children would show up too, asking for haircuts.
That's when Williams started thinking about the advantages of a mobile salon.
The idea crystallized when she saw a news show on Fox 5
television about someone in Maryland with a mobile salon. She started trolling
Craigslist for used RVs. She found a 1992 Rockwood RV with low mileage. She
paid her handyman to build it out into a salon.
Her next plan is to expand to a second mobile salon built
around nail care. Her dream is to one day have a fleet and go national. For
now, she has fulfilled a need - both for her customers and herself.
"It's simply ingenious," said Buchholz, who runs
her own floral-delivery business out of her home. When the mobile salon pulls
up into my cul-de-sac, one by one she cuts and styles my daughters' hair and
mine," she said.
"I'm not cooling my heels in a salon, juggling my
laptop or cell phone. I don't lose any time in my day." When William’s
mobile salon arrives in the morning, usually around 8:30 a.m., one of the neighbors
sends out a text message to the local families, signalling that she's in the neighborhood.
"I so admire her for having the vision and the tenacity
to make it happen. Local and state governments can be big obstacles to
entrepreneurial ingenuity and Rubie did her homework and made it happen,"
Buchholz said. "Most people would not have had the moxie to see their
dream become reality."