The Basin Haircutters is a longstanding salon constantly shining in its hairdressing skills, colour work, education and business acumen and sense of community. Partnering with Lakmé and Haircare Australia, the salon tells us how they’ve grown and thrived over so many years.
18 years ago, The Basin Haircutters started in a small space with four hairdressers, and with a savvy combination of skills has moved to a bigger salon across the road with 24 stylists now in the Basin family. Both salon founders, Mandy Mattiske and Stephen Arrizza have been hairdressing for 35 years, fusing their love of creativity with business and education to propel their burgeoning salon empire. The ensuing diversity of skills and aesthetics has ensured a bold salon community of clients and staff constantly walking through the salon doors.
“When we started in 1984 it was important that hairdressers were all round good haircutters, as we have trained our team we have wanted them to be the best all round hairdressers they can be,” Mandy said. “One of the things we’re most proud of in our salon is if you want edgy hair or traditional or up styles there is someone who can give something to everyone.”
“Our clientele ranges, we have a bit of everything in our salon, I always giggle at the reception desk watching everyone come into work because they all have such a different style. It makes for a really colourful place to work.”
Beyond the salon itself, the duo offer an education platform, which started a decade ago and teaches hairdressing skills as well as important business education, something they found necessary to include when salons continued to ask how they had built their success. The salon partnered with Haircare Australia four years ago, aiding their national education tours. In their ‘Better Business’ agenda they use their own experience and expertise to teach salons how to run a profitable business.
“We teach hairdressers about understanding profit loss, building an awesome team culture, recommending retail, staff inductions, goal setting and planning, and anything to make our business so transparent that we want to share with every other business owner how to run a good business,” Mandy said.
The partnership with Haircare Australia extends to their colour line, and Lakmé suits the salon in its personalised customer care and extreme versatility, emboldening them as artists and business people.
“We’re part of an incredibly artistic, diverse industry and the only boundaries we have is our imagination and our tools and Lakmé gives us colour tools to have no boundaries,” Mandy explained. “It’s a family company from Spain. Something very important to me is sharing goals and values with the product companies, I wanted to work with a familyr company because they really care about the hairdresser and the business. Lakmé push boundaries in an ever changing industry and they always present new possibilities, especially when I’m employing a lot of millennials, I want to be with a company that’s exciting and going forward.”
“They have tech laboratories and evolving research and I think one of most important things to me as a salon owner and my staff and clients, is they’re cruelty free and sustainable, it enables us to align our values.”
With their varied clientele and full colour landscape, Mandy lauds the full colour spectrum and diversity of technology on offer with Lakmé, product that allows for a colourful social media feed that directs users straight through their salon doors.
“Their lightening system is amazing. They have a low ammonia permanent colour and an ammonia free colour and beautiful demi permanent. The consumer is so smart these days, they come into the salon and are educated about these things, so I love that about the colours,” Mandy said.
“We have Instagram and Facebook, we really want to show off a variation of what we do – from balayage to natural colour, bleaching and bright mermaid colours. Instagram is a very important part of our business, social media is how people find us, they coming looking for the tribe they want to be a part of and they see our work and that helps them decide where they want to get their hair done.”
Beyond the product itself, Lakmé and Haircare Australia fit with Basin Haircutters in their strong family values and tailored care that goes above and beyond for clients like Basin.
“Haircare Australia has been very near and dear to me because I have been dealing with Jan and Geoff Gauvin since I was fifteen and started hairdressing,” Mandy shared. “Jan has been a very important business mentor for me. They’re so passionate about the success of the hairdresser and business, they not only educate your staff and help your hairdressers be the best they can, but they’re also passionate about helping you grows as a business, that’s important as well.”
With all the tools to succeed as both a salon and a provider of education, Basin Haircutters has the ideal product lines, partnering companies, business insights and technical skills to succeed in the modern hairdressing landscape. We see this success rising for even more decades to come.
Discover the world of colour possibilities @lakmecolour @haircareaust. For more information visit www.haircareaust.com
The Basin Haircutters Top Formulas:
Smokey blush: 8/22, 10/20 and 0/00 in equal parts with a pea sized amount of 5/66
Rose gold: 10/20 and 10/40 in equal parts
Apricot blush: 8/64 and 8/40 in equal parts and a squeeze of 10/22 and a dash of 7/50