Salon to stars came within hairbreadth of going under
It was a close call for Joseph Cozza Salon, one of the premier San Francisco hairstyling parlors catering to a constellation of celebrities, socialites and glamour seekers.
Just days after its 65 employees were told the Maiden Lane business would be closing at year’s end, new buyers — from Sacramento, of all places — have been found.
“They are going to take over Jan. 1 with the same name and same staff,” Cozza’s husband and and business partner, Joe Bisazza, told us. “We just saved a bunch of jobs.”
It’s news that will lift holiday spirits around Union Square, where several high-fashion names — including Prada, the Mocca cafe and
Arthur Beren Shoes — have pulled the plug in recent months.
For a time, it looked like the salon would become yet another downtown victim of San Francisco rents, labor laws and seemingly endless Central Subway construction.
Cozza got his start inside Gump’s 22 years ago, and boosted his reputation over the years styling the hair of everyone from Laura Bush, Caroline Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi to Anna Deavere Smith, Tina Brown and Sarah Jessica Parker. He and Bisazza moved to their Maiden Lane digs in 2010, where their client list includes the likes of Lynne Benioff, Gina Moscone, Dede Wilsey and Carole Shorenstein Hays.
Their long-term lease was set to expire at year’s end, and Cozza and Bisazza were facing what they called a “significant increase” in rent. However, that’s only part of the reason they had decided to close the doors.
“We have a phenomenal business — it’s not about not making a profit,” Bisazza told us before the sale. “It’s that the city of San Francisco and the state of California make it almost impossible for small businesses to survive anymore.” The headaches include conflicting state and city sick leave provisions, and dueling federal and local health care laws, he said.
Customers are also fed up with having to navigate the Central Subway construction, which is in its seventh year and is steadily shrinking street parking downtown.
Bisazza said it’s just another example of how “the city just doesn’t think about small business owners.”
Cozza and Bisazza say one of the final straws came in 2015 when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law intended to make sure farmworkers were paid for all the time they spent in the fields, and not simply for the amount of produce they picked. After checking with their lawyers, Cozza and Bisazza found the law also applied to their stylists, who had been paid on commission.
The lawyers advised them to pay their employees an extra 4 percent in back wages covering the previous 3½ years. It wound up costing the owners $500,000.
The new law “completely unraveled the industry,” Bisazza said.
Hairstyling businesses eventually succeeded in getting the state to make an exception to allow salons to resume paying stylists on commission. “But the lesson is, we don’t ever want it to happen to us again,” Bisazza said.
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, whose district includes Maiden Lane, said he sympathized with the salon’s owners.
“People are justifiably frustrated, whether it’s regulations or ... traffic congestion and street cleanliness,” he said.
Under the terms of the salon’s sale to Dan and Dora Brock — whose Sacramento insurance company has covered the business for the past 11 years — Cozza will stay on. Bisazza plans to exit after a transition period.
The Brocks tell us they hope to keep everything the same, to the extent that’s possible — though they’re counting on their son-in-law and daughter-in-law, who will largely run the business, to attract a younger clientele.
“I’ve signed a 10-year lease,” Dan Brock said. “I wanted to send a message that I’m 100 percent in, and that’s my commitment to these employees.
“I’m not doing this not to succeed,” Brock said.
Karin Flood, executive director of the Union Square Business Improvement District, said high rents and red tape are making it hard to preserve a mix of businesses in the neighborhood. But then again, she said, there are some good-news stories happening — like the pop-up Museum of Ice Cream.
“It’s a hit with Millennials,” she said, “and is sold out for months.”