Today we’d like to introduce you to Shivani Uppal.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Shivani. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Glam & Glow started in Oct 2014 as a home salon in a small apartment room in Carmel Valley area. Our operating principals were total comfort, relaxation and rejuvenation at a very affordable price. Soon it started attracting people and getting great response. After great success of the Home salon and keeping primary principals as foundation blocks, we got bigger with the start of new 1700 Sq. Ft beauty salon on Miramar Rd. We have built a very good reputation among our clients and have seen very good growth in the first two years.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
There were so many challenges and hurdles. The biggest one was funding to lease the space, renovate and buy equipment.
We just had enough money to put in as security deposit and first month rent. we were actually lucky to get lease approval. To find some additional time to arrange funds, I started doing promotional services without renovation and also sub leased space for couple of months to a temp Diwali festival store. This gave us some time and also able to make some money by sub leasing.
Me and my husband withdrew all our funds from 401 K accounts, took high interest loans and cash advance on our credit cards. we went through period when our credit cards were getting rejected at grocery stores and we were under high debt. I still remember, that was the most stressful time of our lives as we were putting our past savings and even our future into this business.
The other challenge was to find time for our then 3-year-old son. He has been the biggest blessing and biggest contributor to this business. For months we were not able to send him to day care as we can’t afford additional expenses. We were spending all day 7 days a week at salon and he was always with us. we have to plan really well to take him to his favorite places after closing salon.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Glam & Glow story. Tell us more about the business.
Primarily, we are skin care and hair salon popular for threading, facials, body waxing and hair cut/color/styling services. We also offer Henna tattoos and Nail services.
Our Eyebrow threading service is a big hit and our clients travel from far south and north of San Diego to get their eyebrow threaded at our salon. Our facials and waxing services are equally popular. We use natural, herbal products for our facials and clients love the experience.
clients love us for our quality luxury services offered at a great price.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We have been lucky to get lease approval with no funds to show, we did work hard to put a great business plan to convince land lord but still agree that we were lucky to get this great location.
We had our eyes on this location for long. Fortunately, this place stayed vacant for long enough for us to submit our lease application. After we started, we had lot of people coming to us and telling us that they were almost there to put in their application for this location.
Pricing:
- Eybrow Threading – $10.00
- Facials Starting at $45.00
Contact Info:
- Address: 9272 Miramar Rd, Suite 18, San Diego, CA 92126
- Website: www.MyGlamAndGlow.Com
- Phone: 858-4330547
- Email: contact@myglamandglow.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GLAM-and-GLOW-102922570084720/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/glam-and-glow-san-diego-6
- Other: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Miramar+Glam+%26+Glow/@32.894971,-117.128277,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x7d88e6d4691496df!8m2!3d32.894971!4d-117.128277
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