Hidden Gems: Meet Karen Wilkinson of My Hair Salon

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Wilkinson.

Hi Karen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am 3rd generation In my family to do hair. I have been doing hair for 34 years now.
It has always been my dream to do hair. Since I was a little girl. My grandfather would ask me to help him add up his bank books and I was like “WOW! I know what I want to do when I grow up”! It looked like he was rich when you are a little kid. He and his brother had a barbershop downtown. I went to Cosmetology school during high school. Same as my older sister.

My business partner is 4th generation. We worked together for about 5 years and decided to venture out on our own 17 years ago. We have survived a recession, 2 bouts of Cancer and now a pandemic! We opened our own salon because we weren’t appreciated where we were and it was important to create an environment where people wanted to come to work and DID feel appreciated. We are a very family-oriented salon. My partner’s mother still does hair here, my younger sister does nails, her daughter, also does hair, our manager is the 3rd sister in her family to work here, and we also have an aunt and niece that work together. We are growing and so happy to have the team (family) we have. #Teamwork makes the dream work!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
We have faced our share of challenges over the last 17 years. 1st the recession. We were so worried people were going to stop coloring their hair, but they said “I would rather cancel my cable than give up coloring my hair”. We came up with a “root touch up” around their face to stretch their color and created a new service. My business partner Nick went through 2 bouts of Cancer. He is good now, but if that doesn’t shake your foundation…Then you have the pandemic! We would have thought you were crazy if you told us we were going to be closed for 2 1/2 months!

We stayed in touch with our clients through social media. Posting videos of bang trims, how to camouflage your roots with eye shadow, tips to take care of your extensions and some comic relief for a little laugh. We reopened with a stellar plan to keep everyone safe and our clients were so grateful to have us back. Many told us we were doing more to protect them than their doctor’s office. Everyone was so patient and waited their turn. Just over a year later, business is booming, better than ever!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about My Hair Salon?
My Hair Salon is a very family-oriented salon. I make it a point to know everyone’s name that comes to our salon and we treat them like family. We have clients that have been coming to us since before we opened our doors. You develop close relationships when you are in someone’s hair! We offer all hair services from haircuts to hair extensions. Color, highlights, perms. We also offer nail services, and even lash extensions! We are a Paul Mitchell Focus Salon, which means we are almost exclusively Paul Mitchell products. They are a wonderful company and we are so proud to be associated with them. They support us with anything we need from education, advertising, even networking with other Paul Mitchell salons.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: myhairsalononline.com
• Instagram: @myhairsalonmd
• Facebook: @myhairsalonmd