Business & Development, Creswell

Young entrepreneur opens salon

Shannon Whitehead, 25, of Creswell, opened up Beauty Boutique at 240 W. Oregon Ave. in October. She said it has been a learning process and that support has been instrumental in helping her vision come to life. Erin Tierney/The Chronicle

CRESWELL – Shannon Whitehead is seeing her vision come to life.
At 25, the Creswell entrepreneur opened up her own salon in October in the former Burlap and Lace shop on Oregon Avenue.
Whitehead was a nail tech at NuVo Salon when she acquired the business from Nancy Jones. She started to gain interest in owning her own salon when she was working at NuVo and started to sell shampoos. With Jones wanting to transition out of the business, Whitehead said it was perfect timing.
”It surprises me that I’m only 25 and I own a business,” she said. ”There’s still learning how to do it all and learning from other people.”
Jessica Landstra understands what it’s like to open a business at a young age. At 20, she opened Farmlands Market to fill a void in the community after Ray’s Food Place left.
”I would suggest learning from your mistakes, and surround yourself with people who are good at the things you don’t like to do,” Landstra said.
Growing up, Whitehead said she spent ”hours and hours” on Sundays repeatedly doing her nails, and later she went to school to learn how to do it professionally.
”I never thought I’d make money doing it, but I met a great group of girls in Bandon and they built me up and gave me the confidence to do it,” she said.
She added that family has also been a huge supporter of her career. Even when she would get discouraged, her family would motivate her to keep going. They were also instrumental in getting the new space renovated.
Whitehead and her family did most of the remodel themselves, taking around 30 days to transform the space into the chic boutique it is today. They had to take out walls, redo the flooring and get new plumbing.”You don’t realize how much goes into it,” she said. ”It was a lot of hours.”
The biggest challenge for Whitehead has been learning all the different personalities as well as determining what’s best for everyone’s needs. She added that managing inventory was also a learning curve.
At this moment,” she said, what’s most rewarding is simply ”the fact we turned it over in a month and have people working in the salon and making money – that they’re able to put food on their table.”
Going forward, Whitehead’s focus is to keep on going and keep the doors open – to ”just be successful and have good clientele, good reputation,” she said.

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