Karen Welch of SoZo Hair by Bajon Salon and Spa in West Chester, Ohio has two passions in life: the beauty industry and helping those in need. Being able to navigate both is important to her life and business, so she found a way to combine them, bringing together her team and her community.
Karen Welch, Owner, SoZo Hair by Bajon Salon and Spa
Karen’s heartfelt passions motivated her to find ways to fund the philanthropic endeavors that served her community and fulfilled her personal mission. One such way is through her thriving salon and equally heart-forward stylists.
Karen has done many successful fundraisers within her salon and the community and even created a brand new product line where proceeds all go towards charity. Karen also invests her own personal money and resources into giving back and wherever she can find any way to increase profits and find additional funding, she’s on it. And this is how she found the Vish color management system. Using this app, the SoZo team has saved over $25,000 while also freeing up her time through the systems management features. The savings in reducing the color required to do the same service and achieve the same results has given Karen the means to invest in her charity work and effect change in children’s lives all over the world. For Karen and her staff, part of maintaining a successful charity means effectively utilizing Vish, which has resulted in some of the best performance numbers in the entire Vish client community.
Ultimately, it was Karen’s passion that drove her to succeed and make the most of new technology. She trusted in Vish and coached her staff to follow the suggestions made by the Vish team, especially the importance of reweighing products.
“We followed exactly what Josh and Tim suggested,” Karen explained.
Josh and Tim Howard lead the team at Vish and both were highly involved with SoZo as early adopters of the system. During the process of supporting their roll-out, they also dove into their data to help Karen figure out new strategies on pushing down costs and capturing optimal revenue. A practice Vish continues through today.
Her success is also attributed to her ability to ensure her staff’s reweigh performance is as high as it can be. She helps them strive for perfection, encouraging them to reweigh their bowls, and ultimately reach their salon’s goal of cutting waste. Her ability to inspire is clear – today, most of her staff reweigh their bowls 100% of the time, ensuring they are making the most of the Vish system. The importance of reweighing color lies in Vish’s ability to calculate how much color was wasted so it can be removed from formulas for future applications resulting in less waste and more savings.
By combining the two tactics of trust and inspiration, Karen was able to become one of Vish’s most successful users, and even won a 2021 Waste Warrior Award as one of the top 5 waste-saving salons in the country!
The best part of being able to save money and drive profits is Karen’s decision to use those savings to help those in need. She invests in initiatives in her own community and in Samburu, a village adopted by Karen in Kenya. She visits Kenya often, donating toys, clothing, and other necessities. None of this would be possible, Karen said, without operating a profitable salon. Saving money is about so much more than running a successful business, it’s about the security and ability to help those around her and entwine her two passions.
Read more about Karen and the story of SoZo Hair by Bajon Salon and Spa here. To see all of the metrics that won the team a place in the 2021 Waste Warrior Awards, you can find the story and their performance numbers here.
