Connect
To Top

Meet Lauren and Kaylie Ryan of Wildflower Salon in Flagstaff

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren and Kaylie Ryan.

Lauren and Kaylie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
So, Kaylie and I grew up (with one more older sister) in a family where going to a university after high school wasn’t really a huge deal; which is fantastic especially when you HAVE NO IDEA what you want to do for the rest of your life! Having the freedom as a young adult to go to my job and make my own money then go do the things we wanted to do was great, but after a year or so of me still living with my parents I got “the talk.” My mom sat down with me in my room and basically told me I needed to do SOMETHING with my life. She didn’t care what it was but being out all night with my friends and sleeping in all day was not in my best interest; although I didn’t see anything wrong with it at the time.

Kaylie had already been out of the house at this time, as she is two years older. She was working for a travel agency booking people’s international getaways and actually got to book and experience her very first trip to Europe. After years of working for this company and kind of losing interest in the corporate side of things, Kaylie reached a point similar to mine where it was like “what now?”

When pondering what I could do with my life whilst sitting in my room as a confused 19-year-old does, I thought about going to school for massage therapy but it didn’t really spark anything inside me. After researching trade schools and seeing all the different licensing one can receive and cosmetology being one of them I kind of lit up. I checked out all of the local Cosmetology schools in my area and planned to tour them in hopes of starting a new venture in life! I called Kaylie to tell her and she was basically like “I’m gonna come with you.” How joyous!

Let’s just say, after the first day of beauty school, we were totally down. We were gonna make money cutting and painting people’s hair? Score!

Fast forward to graduating, getting our licenses and working together in Flagstaff, AZ at the Aveda Red 115 Salon. We both agree it was the best experience to have as a fresh new stylist right out of beauty school. We both worked from an assistant up to a ‘Senior Stylist’ through the gradation of Aveda Co. standards in the course of four years. At this point, we were pretty fed up with the corporate scene. We were not raised to work for someone else, we were raised to work for ourselves because if you want something done right, you do it yourself. In Spring of 2016, I had quit working at Aveda and joined my friend and fellow co-worker at a rental-based salon. It is the scariest decision ever to take that leap, just so everyone’s aware. SCARY AF. Seriously. Alas, working for myself was the best! I was loving life and even though it (being my own boss) came with more responsibility it also gave me complete freedom over my schedule, prices and creativity! It wasn’t long until Kaylie took the plunge as well and joined my side at the same salon.

After a couple of years at this local, family-owned salon I came into work one day and see my sister is already there. “I have some crazy news dude”, I said. I went on to tell her that one of our friends and clients who is a real estate agent in town sent me the Zillow link to our beloved Tirzah Salon being sold for half a million dollars! Half a million dollars in Flagstaff is pretty standard, this place was gonna be scooped up in no time and probably from some rich dude who wants to turn it into another BnB! SHIT!!!! What were we to do? I mean Kaylie and I HAVE been talking about for years “…if this were our salon…”. I guess this was it. We had to open our imagined, dream salon…and like now because who knows how long we’re going to be able to work in this current salon and where would our clients go and what about our team? We can’t leave each other!

The next day, Shawna (friend and fellow stylist) being the single mom she is and freaking the fuck out about what she was going to do next found a space for lease on Craigslist. In the heart of downtown, overlooking Heritage Square was the most perfect space ever for a salon. Our salon. Six stylists in need of a new place to call home. So we did it. By the end of the week, Kaylie and I had gotten a loan from our amazing dad and cousin from Tucson and signed the lease on 107 N San Francisco St, Ste 3. Wow! What a whirlwind. Now, we have an empty 1200 sq. ft. salon floor to fill!

Still working full time at Tirzah Salon, we built Wildflower Salon in seven weeks. With our contractors (only the best would do) coming from Phoenix and Tucson we only had certain times to manage those parts of the salon being built while simultaneously figuring out the esthetics of the salon and purchasing all the furniture so it would get shipped in time for opening day. It was a hell of a 7 weeks, believe me, We had our ups and downs but we couldn’t be more proud of what we produced. The space we and the rest of our team have to work in now is more than we could have dreamed of. It feels so good and we are so happy to present Wildflower Salon to our friends, family and our new clients to come! Come see what we’re all about!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Success never comes without struggle. One of our first challenges was signing a lease on our new salon space knowing that we weren’t given any slack on paying rent as we built out the salon. Without knowing how long it’d take to be able to open our doors we still had to pay our full rent for two months and our higher-priced water bill, even though we weren’t even doing business and using the extra water yet. That was hard to swallow, but money is cyclical and we always say “it is what it is!”, and we move forward.

Opening a business is challenging in itself, we learned as we went and checked off one task after the next which in the beginning seemed to be never-ending. Looking back on it, I know that Kaylie was and is the best partner in opening this salon because we equally do the work that needs to be done and nothing feels better than that.

So yeah, other than the typical stresses of opening your own salon, I’d say things went extremely smooth.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Wildflower Salon is a hair salon where no matter which stylist you see you will end up having a great experience and leave with beautiful, healthy hair. We specialize in giving the client what they desire with our professional advice and guidance along the way. Each of us here do both color and cuts but we individually bring something special that sets us apart from one another. For instance, Kaylie and I are the perfect dynamic duo as she does all the coloring things, preferably blondes, and I prefer to cut all day every day. Together, we transform hair into its best potential!

Living in a small mountain town for almost a decade, being 1 of 3 extremely close sisters, and being a hairdresser makes you a big part of the community. People know Wildflower Salon as the girls from Tirzah (previous salon) or the sister’s salon. Almost all of us who worked at Tirzah work here now.

I’m very proud to say that we are a women-owned salon, we practice good recycling habits within the salon while participating with the company Green Circle Salons, and retail organic and eco-friendly products. Kaylie and I are also so proud of the space we have created for our clients and our staff. We have all worked in environments that weren’t exactly up to par and sometimes straight-up toxic. Wildflower Salon is very inviting, clean, open and minimal. We intended for everything in our salon to serve a purpose; to be ergonomic, and if it’s not then it’s out! We want everyone to feel comfortable here, and if that takes giving out complimentary seltzer waters then we’re gonna keep doing it. We also take pride (pun definitely intended) in our gender non-specific service list and service prices. We welcome anyone to come through our doors (as long as you’re nice).

Aside from our focus on being a clean and green salon, we set ourselves apart by being real. Is it sometimes overwhelming being a hairdresser when you have up to 10 different people in your chair in a day? Yes. But we are here for not just your hair needs but to listen about your stressful day or how your kids are driving you up a wall or maybe it’s the only time you get to NOT talk or think about anything. You can do that too! This is a safe space.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
This is like giving a thank you speech at the Oscar’s or something. “I’d like to thank…” “Without these people, none of this would have been possible…” Oh wait, that’s actually true. In all seriousness, literally NONE of this could have happened without all of these people stepping up, showing up and putting all their hard work into this salon.

Dad. He is number one for many reasons. Too many. He will always be number 1! Thanks, Rich Ryan! Our dad, his friend Gib and our cousin Dylan were a huge help in contracting our salon. From electrical work to building custom made counters they were the men behind it all! Our third sister’s boyfriend Preston who is a professional plumber hooked up all of our lines through which water moves which are probably the most important thing in a salon. Thanks, bud! And then, a very special thanks to Shawna and Sara, two of our amazing stylists and friends. They helped with our online presence, marketing, and being here for us when we had little tasks to do like put together our salon chairs or just another ear to bounce ideas off of for the esthetics of the place. We literally have the DREAM TEAM!

Last shoutout goes to how the name ‘Wildflower’ came about. Our mom died about a year before we opened the salon (July of 2019) and she is hands down the inspiration behind our name. It is a reference to the Tom Petty album ‘Wildflowers’. You know how some people read scripture from the Bible and go to church? Well, Tom Petty WAS our church, thanks to our mom. She would definitely approve of the name and she would love Wildflower Salon and she for sure is super proud of us. It’s an honor to honor her.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Stephanie McCarthy (logo)

Suggest a story: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in