Pure Hairstyling
Style and Relationships Thrive at Pure Hairstyling | August 2018
By Maria Landry
When Amy Jewell graduated from Skowhegan Area High School, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do for a career.
“I thought if I got my hairdressing license, it would keep me going for a while until I decided,” she said recently.
What she decided was that she loves the salon business, from cutting and coloring to forging relationships with clients and colleagues.
“I worked at Xana-Do [in Madison] for nine years and then went out on my own,” she said, noting that having flexibility to spend time with her son, now a freshman in high school, was a driving factor in starting her own business.
In 2009 she established Pure Hairstyling on Waterville Road in Skowhegan, focusing on hair and nails. Then the salon’s current location at 10 Silver Street became available in 2011, and Jewell jumped at the opportunity.
With the extra space the Silver Street building afforded, she was able to add massage and other spa elements to Pure Hairstyling’s repertoire. Now the business features four other stylists besides herself, one nail tech, and a massage therapist.
“It’s not just me—it’s all the girls together that makes Pure Hairstyling,” she said. “All of my girls at the salon, we’re like one big family.”
“We do lots of hair coloring, hair cutting, waxing,” she said. “My nail tech does the shellac. She does a wonderful pedicure. My massage therapist does different kinds of massages, stone massages.”
“I eventually would love to get another massage therapist so we could offer couples massages,” Jewell said.
Jewell encourages her team to continue their education with two classes or hair shows every year.
“Every six months there are new things,” she explained. “Everything’s getting better. Everything’s more about healthy hair than years ago when it was all about drying it out and perming and all that stuff we used to do to our hair. Two classes or shows a year keeps you up on what’s changing.”
She added that they also do plenty of updos and makeup for momentous occasions like weddings and proms.
“Those are always fun,” she said. ”You did their eighth-grade hair, and then their prom hair, and then all of a sudden they’re getting married and you’ve watched all that along the way.”
Jewell says she’s had some of her clients since she first started out 18 years ago.
“You know what’s going on in their life, and they’re always asking about my son and what’s going on in our life,” she noted. “You have quite a relationship with those clients.”
She reminisced about one “little boy” who comes in for a haircut—“I always call him little,” she said. She gave him his first haircut when he was just four months old, and he recently graduated from high school.
“It really makes you think over the years, the time that’s gone by, watching different ones grow up. Some kids, when they first come to us, they’re scared to get their hair cut, and as they get older we kind of joke about it. The relationships that you gain… I love it.”
Learn more about Pure Hairstyling on their website and Facebook page.
