| Dettie Panis: 25 years of keeping Leyteños beautiful A HOMEGROWN beauty parlor in Leyte is making probinsyanos proud for helping them keep in step with the latest beauty and hairstyling trends in Manila. She opened her first real salon along busy Real Street near her kids' school to be close to them. She believed beauty was a continuing evolution because of the changing trends, a reason why she continually attends trainings in Manila and abroad. DETTIE is the only stylist hereabouts who earned a diploma in Creative Cutting at Vidal Sasoon Academy in London and attended courses on classic and contemporary haircutting in Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur under Toni sband, Peter Panis, a lawyer. Panis served as city councilor for 17 years. An integral philosophy in her business is Dettie's belief that hairstylists shouldn't be made to clean the salon which is the responsibility of janitors. They also schedule the customers and entertain demanding clients who don't like to wait. The story behind Dettie's business success is as interesting as its owner who built her chain of salons from the ground up. The Ormoc branch just celebrated its first anniversary on May 17. At present, a Dettie Panis salon offers hair perming, hair straightening therapy, rebonding and Korean curls while its spa gives full body massage, Swedish, hilot and combination services. "An entrepreneur who is only after the business side of the industry without passion for the craft will not last two hours inside a salon," Dettie said. Dettie Panis Salon o are not successful, as they hop from one salon to another. "Hindi naman kailangan malaki ang income every day," she said. Straining her workers to earn more was a losing proposition because whatever extra money she made just went to the hospital when they got sick. Competition has not been an issue for Dettie. This arrangement prompted her to become a franchisee of Beauty Magic Marketing, a store selling beauty products and equipment for budget salons. It is run by eldest son Peter Julius and has branches in Tacloban and Ormoc, Leyte; and Catbalogan, Samar. MANY longtime regulars want Dettie to personally attend to them. Her salon is the only one of its kind in Eastern Visayas, with its own training center accredited by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority where she sources her talent pool. For example, a gross income of more than P50,000 a day at her main branch on Zamora Street, Tacloban, means that the salon received more than the ideal number of customers. Dettie says her services are competitively priced with other Manila-based salons that have penetrated the provincial market. A P1,500 hairstyling from these kinds of parlors costs only P950 in Dettie Panis salons. In the Ormoc branch, for example, where she stays three days a week, Sunday nights are allotted for the training of its staff. Since she is constantly invited as a resource speaker and demonstrator on starting a salon to students, Dettie also plans to turn her training center into a full-pledged beauty school not limited to her own salons. Upon returning to Tacloban, Dettie buckled down to work and began her beauty parlor right in their home garage with only P1,500 as capital. The people she met in her previous work along with her husband's connections helped attract customers so much so that soon, the limited space in their garage couldn't accommodate everyone. But with a brand new pastime catching her fancy, law school had to take a backseat. They now have underarm whitening and will soon introduce laser skin peeling and slimming services. She insists on using only organic products. Moreover, prices of budget salons may come cheap but the services offered are mostly inferior. |
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Dettie Panis: 25 years of keeping Leyteños beautiful
