BY Gabrielle Laperrière-Leblanc & Julissa Hurtado Mejaries
Twenty-three-year-old Sharon Nicole Mosquera has her own at-home lash extension studio nickylashex.
It started after she completed beauty training right after she graduated high school back in 2019.
“I did it [the training] purely for fun at first and I would do my friends’ lashes here and there,” says Mosquera.
After a while of working retail jobs and doing one lash pose a month, Mosquera realized she had built a small faithful clientele.
“After that, I created an Instagram page for my work and nowadays with social media, it was easy to grow my clientele even more,” she explains.
Nicole Sharon Mosquera is doing a lash-pose on a customer in her at-home studio. Photo by Gabrielle Laperrière-Leblanc.
Mosquera says that social media platforms such as Instagram have business plans one can pay for, to push your business out to other users.
“You pay a small amount of money and when someone looks up ‘lash extension’ and ‘Montreal,’ my page will be suggested to them,” says Mosquera.
Cost of starting your at-home studio. Infographic by Gabrielle Laperrière-Leblanc.
Nathalie Cao owns the Dolly Swan Nails salon. She explains that although there is enough clientele for everyone to make a profit, at-home studios did change the market dynamic.
“I understand everyone is trying to hustle, but at-home studios have made it harder for business owners like myself,” says Cao.
Cao went to school for business and opened her nail salon in 2011. Situated on Queen Mary Road, Cao has had to expand two times. She says the pandemic changed the dynamics of the beauty industry.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, all salons had to close and even coming in store to do inventory, we had employees from the city come in and ask why we were here […] it was definitely the pandemic that made it possible for so many nail technicians to start taking clients from home,” says Cao. “The thing that I would see, and still see constantly is girls saying that the way they dedicate a space in their house to do nails is just as, if not more luxurious than in a salon, and they play on the “cozy” aspect of it all.”
The entrance of the Dolly Swan Nail salon owned by Nathalie Cao features a colour picking station. Photo by Gabrielle Laperrière-Leblanc.
Cao notes that her salon has some protection from the new competition because of its long-standing reputation.
“I am lucky because I have built a loyal clientele over the years, but for new owners, it is now really difficult to open your shop,” says Cao. “I know because 50 percent of my technicians that work here will one day want to open their salons, some already have and they tell me how hard it has become.”
The rise of at-home based businesses. Video by Julissa Hurtado Mejaries
Keon Zheng, founder and CEO of the skincare company Klay & Co., believes that at-home studios are actually expanding the beauty market and finding customers where it wouldn’t have before.
“It is now more common than ever for young women to keep up with certain beauty trends, and at-home studios have made it cheaper and closer for a lot of folks. The latter therefore finds a new type of customer that wouldn’t necessarily have made it to a spa or a salon,” he explains.
According to Zheng, at-home studio goers are simply future salons and spa customers.
“When these folks grow older and have a different budget, a considerate portion of them will then go to the spa and the salon […] I wouldn’t know how else to explain the ever-growing numbers in this area of the beauty industry otherwise,” explains Zheng.
This abandoned lash extension studio is located on Chemin-de-la-cote-st-Luc. Photo by Gabrielle Laperrière-Leblanc.
When it comes to doing business with smaller at-home studio beauty technicians, Zheng says he would never consider doing business with them: “When it comes to my skincare company I only have contracts with spas and hotels. It’s a question of liability, there are too many risks associated with it,” said Zengh.
That sentiment is echoed by Mosquera.
“Having a space in your home to practice whatever beauty service it is, does create space for people that will open without the proper training […] “When it comes to lashes and the fact that it deals with people’s eyes, the proper training for hygiene is super important. If you skip it you’re not going to be able to keep your clients around for the long run as you may endanger them eventually,” she says.
