Kinky Curly Straight, a relatively new salon in Stepney, Australia, is the brainchild of Uros and Mojca Mikic. While it was Rugby that brought Uros and Mojca to Australia, it was the salon that made them stay. Uros works the creative side and Mojca runs the business aspect, and together their talents are as eclectic as the playlist you’ll hear at your salon appointment. Learn more about this salon that offers an “affordable luxurious experience” in our interview with Kinky Curly Straight!
BANGSTYLE: How long has Kinky Curly Straight been around?
Kinky Curly Straight: We are the new kids on the block. Really, we opened our first salon on the 3rd of September 2012, so we have been around for just over 7 months. We love working with our great staff and amazing companies and doing everything we can to keep our salon sustainable and green.
BANGSTYLE: Can you tell us a bit about the owners?
Kinky Curly Straight: Uros and Mojca Mikic are both originally from Slovenia, Europe. After a few years of working in the UK, Italy and New Zealand we have settled down in Adelaide, South Australia. You ask how we ended up in Adelaide? Well a long story short, Uros is a rugby player as well as a hairstylist and so his rugby playing days took him round the world and to New Zealand. After 3 years in New Zealand, Mojca got a great job offer in Adelaide and so we packed up our bags again, added a greyhound, and moved to Australia’s driest state.
Uros has been in the hair industry all his life, see he grew up in his mum’s hair salon in Slovenia. He has had the great fortune to travel the world playing rugby and working as a hair stylist and as such, had a chance to experience how salons are run in a few different countries and cultures. He has recently been asked to join the Australian Revlon Professional Color Specialist Team and looks forward to creating some new color trends with the rest of the Revlon Australian creative team. Uros is also a Kevin Murphy session stylist and loves working behind the scenes on photoshots and runways shows. A few of Uros’ recent achievement include finalist for American Crew Face Off and finalist for Men’s Hairdresser of the Year in the Australian Hair Fashion awards.
Mojca is the business side of the salon. She looks after the Kinky Curly Straight brand, marketing, staff, KPIs and spreadsheets and gives Uros the freedom to focus on the creative side of the business.
So all in all, quite a good match for a business having two dedicated people looking after this new up-and-coming salon.
BANGSTYLE: What is the vibe and décor of the salon? What’s the inspiration behind it?
Kinky Curly Straight:We wanted to bring a bit of Europe to Australia. We wanted to create a luxurious living room where our clients will come to relax from their busy lives. Everything in the salon is opulent, the heavy gold mirrors, the baroque stations, the bookshelf and the coolest basin chairs around. And we threw in a few quirky industrial pieces to tie in the fact that we are a young, trendy salon. And we have some special the stars looking down at us: James Dean, Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy and the iconic Marilyn.
We really wanted to offer our clients a luxurious experience, starting with the design and continuing with top of the range products, excellent service and some home-made cookies.
Mojca and Uros are very passionate about the environment and have a strong belief that in this day and age new businesses should be socially responsible and look at being eco-friendly and sustainable. It started with eco-friendly disposable towels by EasyDry and recycled aluminum foil by ReFoil and that was just the beginning. The salon has just done its first carbon review and offset all produced carbon ($40 worth), which just shows how dedicated we are to keeping this a ‘clean’ salon.
The salon was designed by Uros and Mojca and has won Best New Salon Design in the 2013 Australian Hair Fashion Awards.
BANGSTYLE: What’s on the playlist?
Kinky Curly Straight: A bit of everything really. We love mixing up sounds from across the world, from French jazz to Brazil samba, to the soulful sounds of Adele and Duffy; but always trying to keep it nice and relaxing.
We feel the right music can really set the mood in the salon and so we are bringing in some live music on Friday nights. We have a local vocal studio Revolution down the road and asked them to line up a few of their singers to bring some unique entertainment to our clients on Friday nights.
BANGSTYLE: What is the clientele like?
Kinky Curly Straight: We’d say the majority are professional working women, but in saying that we do have a strong male clientele (maybe to do with the fact Uros has been named finalist in 2013 American Crew Face Off and finalist in Men’s Hairdresser of the Year in 2013 Australian Hair Fashion Awards). We do great work that translates to the street, and our clients can keep tabs on our Facebook page and see what kind of trends we are producing on actual clients. Beautiful colors, precision cuts, just making sure the work is outstanding every time and that brings in a varied clientele.
BANGSTYLE: What kind of client experience do you like to create?
Kinky Curly Straight: Affordable luxurious experience, that’s the motto for our salon and services. We have the highest standards for our stylists and their work; we invest heavily in their training so we can safely say our clients will get top service. And we pair that with excellent customer service; we find that our clients love to know us personally. That sounds odd I know as hairstylist cut hair personally, but you’d be amazed how many clients have said to us the fact that one person looks after them not a whole team, where they feel like on an assembly line, is making a big difference in them coming back to Kinky Curly Straight.
We believe we can offer top service with high standard products and yet not charge an arm and a leg. It’s more about educating our clients on how to wear their new haircut and how to style it at home and which products to use to support the new do; in the end it is about making sure the clients are satisfied.
BANGSTYLE: What is Kinky Curly Straight known for?
Kinky Curly Straight: We are known for our young, innovative and passionate team. We are known for trying to make this a better industry, we members of the Australian Hairdressing Council (AHC) and have been accredited the Gold Salon Select accreditation by the AHC.
And we are known for being green. All our clients and the Australian hair industry know us for setting new trends in the sustainability and eco front. We have all these amazing and surprisingly easy policies and procedures set up that help save the world, one client and one salon at a time.
BANGSTYLE: What do you look for in the stylists for the salon?
Kinky Curly Straight: Personality and values are key. Warm and kind people who will look after our clients and who truly want to make our clients feel comfortable and give them the best service. You can teach staff a lot of things but you can’t teach personality and values. And we want people who are keen to work on shows, shots, competitions, people who are creative and want to better themselves through education in this creative and ever changing industry.
The main thing was to look for staff that would carry on our belief of excellent, friendly, professional service and really work hard at making our clients love the salon and love their new look.
BANGSTYLE: Any at-home hair tips that you would like to share with our readers?
Kinky Curly Straight: We are lucky to live in a time when we as users can ask so much from hair product companies. So educate yourself and invest in top quality products that are not tested on animals, are paraben free, sulphate free and are environmentally friendly, either by way of production (carbon free and sourced from sustainable farms) and come in eco-friendly packaging.
BANGSTYLE: Any future plans or goals for the salon?
Kinky Curly Straight: Grow, win awards, build an amazing team, get invited to do top runway shows, produce some amazing work, learn and then grow some more. But grow and not lose sight of the client. Keep the personal touch, this is becoming more and more important and people are looking to getting back to basics and back to the personal experience.
Hopefully open another Kinky Curly Straight soon, who knows, the sky is the limit if you’re passionate, hardworking and really, really want to succeed.
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