Keri Gold Salon Celebrates Anniversary
When Jeffrey Snow and his wife, Kerri, decided to open a hair salon in Buckhead in September 2014, their goal was to make it a place where men and women could relax.
Reflecting back on Keri Gold Salon’s first year, Snow said that’s just what they achieved.
“We didn’t want to have a TV blaring,” he said. “We wanted to have a place to come and relax and have your hair and other essentials taken care of. We went about designing it, making it so that Kerri and her friends and my daughter and her friends could come here and really be comfortable. We’ve worked really hard, and I think we’ve accomplished that.”
Snow may be new in the hair industry, but he’s not new to business. He bought HiFi Buys out of bankruptcy in 1982 and transformed it into Atlanta’s leading consumer electronics retailer. He also owns two apartment complexes in southern Florida.
He said the salon (kerigoldsalon.com) at 1258 W. Paces Ferry Road is a success in part because of that business experience compiling a team of employees with great skills and molding that team so everybody does what he or she does well.
“The basis of how you run a business to me and my wife doesn’t change,” Snow said. “The formula is pretty consistent. You just have to be able to implement it.”
So he hired talented stylists and makeup artists and treated them better than he said the marketplace does by offering two weeks’ vacation, a 401(k) plan with an employer match after six months of employment, health insurance, and a pay scale at the upper end of businesses in Buckhead.
“When we had HiFi Buys, we had an inverted pyramid,” Snow said. “The customer was on top, and the employees were one step below that. If you treat your employees right and you get the right employees, they’ll treat the customers right. It’s proved its worth.”
As part of treating customers right, Snow likes to be out on the floor, meeting men and women who are having their hair styled and offering them drinks to make their experience as comfortable and relaxing as possible.
“Our philosophy here is we invite people into our homes,” Snow said. “We model ourselves after that. We feel like if we treat people like they’re in our home, we know how we want to be treated. It’s almost a no-brainer for us to treat people like that.” He said he gets positive feedback all the time.
The salon has eight stylists and two makeup artists and plans in the future to hire aestheticians and cosmetologists to offer waxing and skin treatments.
“Very often women want to come here during the day and get their hair made up and their makeup put on,” Snow said. “We’ll be in that business. There’s not any limit to what we can do. We’re very focused on the customers. We’ll change to what the customers need.”
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