BEST LITTLE HAIR HOUSE IN VINTON `BUSTING LOOSE AT THE SEAMS'

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993                   TAG: 9304080485
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: E-20   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
BEST LITTLE HAIR HOUSE IN VINTON `BUSTING LOOSE AT THE SEAMS'
Nine years ago, when Pam Mitchell opened her first hair salon, the Best Little Hair House in Vinton, she declared it was simply too small.
About three weeks ago, she greeted hundreds of guests at an open house in her expanded Hardy Road salon - more than twice the size of the old one and only a quarter-mile away away.
Then she said the same thing.
"I knew immediately that we were busting loose at the seams in the other salon," she says, sitting in the roomy lobby of the new Best Little Hair House in Vinton and Tanning Shed (We Tan Hides).
But Mitchell's feeling that this place isn't quite big enough, either, isn't based on today's customer base or salon offerings so much as it is on her plans for the next nine years.
She and her manager and grade-school friend, Lorraine Woodford, are filled with ideas for the 3,000-square-foot shop that offers tanning; makeup, hair and nail services; and crafts, jewelry, cards and hair care products for sale. For instance, they want a popcorn machine to add to their coffee and cookie supply kept on hand for Hair House customers. Mitchell wants to break into wigs, too.
And still to be added are the gazebo, landscaping, loads of furniture and supplies still unpacked from the old Hair House, and a tenant to occupy the room beside the salon. But, if Mitchell hasn't leased the area within a year, she'll use the space herself for an antiques and craft store, already christened Treasures and Pleasures.
"We haven't finished here," she laughs. "And there's a lot of land in the back we could buy, and we might just build back to [Virginia] 24!"
Mitchell's Hair House is literally a home-grown business. When she was 15, she began doing her friends' and family's hair out of her house - for free. Because she got married at 17 and had children two and four years later, she never had time for beauty school. Until, that is, she turned 32.
At the urging of her "customers" and the prospect of earning money for what they deemed a natural talent, Mitchell enrolled in a hair-styling school and finished in 13 months.
She was ready to put the "open" sign on her house when the county made it illegal to operate a beauty salon from a residence.
But Mitchell had access to the one thing that keeps many small businesses as mere dreams: money. Her brother-in-law, Pete Goria of North Carolina, agreed to back her in opening her own shop.
She located the perfect spot in a storage area adjacent to a Hardy Road business. What most friends - including Goria - saw as only a dirty caged room, Mitchell pictured as home for the business she had wanted since she did her first 'do at 15.
And when she opened for business, the 14-by-30-foot room with its too-tall barber chairs and the wooden boxes the hairstylists had to stand on, filled quickly with old and new customers alike.
Mitchell and Woodford attribute the Hair House's success to the relationship its employees share with its customers. "We're a professional salon, but we have a different type of relationship," Mitchell says. At the Hair House, everyone is on a first-name basis and like family.
Woodford even assembles scrapbooks detailing the Hair House days. These are packed with pictures of customers from nine years ago and their children now, and the various holidays the Hair House celebrates - birthdays, Christmas, Halloween and the anniversary of the salon's opening.
In one scrapbook, Mitchell has a two-page essay telling the story of how she opened her first salon. As she reads it for the first time in many months, her eyes fill with tears. Woodford grabs a Kleenex for each of them.
Their tears are not the first shed since opening the Hair House. There were plenty back when even the old salon was only a thought. Mitchell says the most trying time, though, has been opening this new salon. "But we always came through it," she says looking at Woodford. "Through the tears and stuff."
When Mitchell decided to expand her shop five years ago, she and Woodford took two years to locate an ideal place. "There's no property on [Virginia] 24/Hardy Road, Vinton, not thoroughly researched," says Woodford. When they found a spot of land they loved, Goria agreed to back Mitchell again. So she bought the land and built the new Hair House, complete with antique furnishings, a broad front porch and a porch swing. That took another three years.
Though Mitchell is left with a loan to repay, a shop to run and little time left to spend at her real house, the immediate payoff is real. As at the first open house nine years ago, the second open house brought out old customers and noncustomers eager for a peek. For much of that day, the parking lot overflowed with cars.
"It's been a great nine years," Woodford sums up as Mitchell rushes to a just-arrived customer. "It's been long, but it's been great."
The Best Little Hair House in Vinton is open by appointment, and walk-ins are welcome when a hair stylist is available. Shed hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sunday, 1-6 p.m. 890-6004.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB