Sharmadean Reid
Save our salons – why I’m marching on Trafalgar Square this weekend
IT’S been a difficult and divisive week for the Beauty Industry as it was announced that some services could return to work. While hair stylists, beard trimmers and nail artists could reopen from July 13, those who performed brow, lash and facial treatments were deemed too high risk. This meant that those who could operate almost felt guilty and it became a very bittersweet celebration indeed. The policy outraged the beauty industry, who felt the Government had not considered exactly how they work and had inadvertently discriminated against what is a largely female workforce. In an ideal world, policymakers would have had beauty pros in the room, talking to them to get a better understanding of how they work. It would be interesting to see how the world would look if policy design took a leaf from agile start-up development.
THIS week, my son started his summer holidays, so I drove him to my hometown of Wolverhampton to spend time with his family and free me and his father up for what looked to be a hectic week. It’s been amazing to spend so much time with him over lockdown.
On the drive back I binge-listened to The Sun King podcast about Rupert Murdoch. Regardless of your opinion on the man himself, it hit home how giving a voice to an under-served market and using the latest technology are key tenets of a successful consumer-facing business.
SINCE lockdown started, we’ve hosted our own Weekly Covid-19 Briefing specifically for Beauty Pros every Monday at 4pm. What started out as a communication channel to parse the rambling information from the Daily Briefings for the Beauty Industry has turned into a safe space for women to share their issues. Beauty Pros have called in tears with stories of unspeakable debt, of getting part-time jobs in supermarkets to pay the bills, and of deteriorating mental health as they live with the uncertainty. On Wednesday night as I was going to bed at 11pm I received a message about a march to protest against the Government’s restrictions on beauty services and either give us a date to go back to work or to give financial support. This Sunday at 12pm, Trafalgar Square will look very different indeed as Beauty Pros from all over the UK will begin the walk to Parliament to put a face to the unknown salons that Boris and William Wragg were guffawing about in the House of Commons.
On Sunday we will march to either get a date to go back to work or financial support
WHILE I no longer own a salon, Covid has had an impact on my business too. Beautystack is an app that lets Beauty Pros list their business and get bookings from their social posts, and like many others, we have been unable to operate during the pandemic. As lockdown lifts, we become an essential resource for our users to help get their businesses back on track. I empathise so strongly with the salon owners, because just a few years ago before I started my tech company, it would have been me. To support us in our recovery, we’ve applied to the Future Fund, a scheme that provides government loans to UK-based companies, ranging from £125,000 to £5 million. Unlike beauty, tech is a relatively male, middle-class industry and thus having access to capital is also bittersweet. The Future Fund only works if it’s match-funded by private investors, so from Thursday I started the arduous and painful process of fundraising as a black woman in tech.