Exploring Life & Business with Arielle Poll of Ritual Hair Company

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arielle Poll.

Hi Arielle, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started doing hair in 2010, and initially, I worked in a commission salon. Commission salons are the typical salon structure–an open floor plan, lots of stylists. You are an employee in that business model. After a few years of that structure, I left and opened up a one-chair studio at Salon Lofts.

Salon lofts follow a booth rent model, where you are self-employed instead of someone’s employee. Chair rental means you have the freedom to make your own schedule, choose which services you do, choose your price structure, your product line, etc. The trade-off in most spaces created for chair rental is that you are now in a small room by yourself. I initially enjoyed all the freedoms but it got lonely working in a 5×8 room without community.

I missed seeing humans, I missed the daily chatter and I really missed seeing people do hair. In 2020, I met Joy Powers and Jen Baldwin, and we decided to open up Ritual. Ritual looks like a traditional salon, but we follow the chair rental model. It really is the best of both worlds.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Opening a business during a pandemic sounds like it should be really hard, and it certainly was not easy, but all things considered, I feel like we got incredibly lucky.

We had some hiccups with the construction portion of the project, but that’s not unique ever but particularly not in a post-Covid world. Otherwise, things really fell into place. It was definitely a LOT of work, and I am so grateful there were three of us to divide and conquer.

As you know, we’re big fans of Ritual Hair Company. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Ritual Hair Company is a unique salon model. My two partners and I are career hairdressers who have been in the industry for well over a decade. We have taken all of the things we have benefitted from in our former workplaces and made sure to include those, as well as for trim off any unpleasant aspects of former workplaces.

I am so proud of our brand for really providing a supportive culture to local hair artists. Our environment is designed by hairdressers for hairdressers. Most places I’ve worked that look beautiful on the outside are run by people who want to make your work as hard as possible for as little as possible. We took all of the things we wanted in a salon — amazing lighting, top-tier equipment, marketing, walk-ins, business coaching, and a sense of community and made sure to make that the foundation of our business.

But we also allow each stylist to be in control. If they want help and support, we are there, but otherwise, we stay out of their hair (pun intended). We just want a cool place to work, and cool coworkers to spend 40 hours a week with. No strings attached.

What do you think about luck?
They say that if you put in 10,000 hours of practice, you can become an expert, and all three of us have surpassed that threshold in our careers years ago. As much as I would like to claim success based on hard work and individual merit, I feel so incredibly fortunate that we met when we did and shared the same vision.

I left my job at Salon Lofts to work at Marigold Parlour, which is where I met Joy and Jen (my two partners). Marigold is a salon in Seaboard Station. I had just started there in an attempt to regain some community that I wasn’t getting in the loft I was renting previously. I found out the salon was going to be torn down shortly thereafter. We found out the timeline and decided we needed to make up a contingency plan and that’s how our project got kick-started. It was certainly an instance of when sometimes what didn’t work out for you really works out for you.

Also, we ended up in the perfect location, and I think that is partially due to the fact that commercial real estate was not exactly thriving due to all the uncertainty in the world due to the pandemic. I mean honestly, I could list a thousand reasons how we were lucky. Each one of us has had so much help from our friends and family. One of the signature pieces in our salon is this beautiful wooden slat wall, and it was built by Joy’s husband John who owns a fencing company.

We originally got a quote for that which would have been impossibly out of our price range. Our logo and all of our graphic design have been done by my boyfriend who went to design school at NC State. Our photography was done by a friend of mine. We all feel so incredibly grateful for all the help we’ve gotten, and for things falling into place how and when they did.

Pricing:

• We are all contract employees with different tiers of pricing.
• We are all experienced craft hairdressers, charging anywhere from $75-100 for a haircut.
• Color services range widely, we have a new client form on our linktr.ee to fill out to receive a price quote.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.ritualhairco.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ritual.haircompany
• Other: www.linktr.ee/ritualhaircompany

Image Credits
Taylor O’Donnell, Tay Marrie Photography