Uckfield Entrepreneurs
Claire Davies is an amateur genealogist and a sometime hot air ballooner. She has also been a top hairdresser and stylist for over 36 years. After training at Brighton Technical Collage and completing courses at L’Oreal, Wella and Vidal Sassoon academies, Claire worked as a stylist in three salons, before she became manager of both Army & Navy and Debenhams Essanelle salons in Eastbourne.
In 1995 she established a new salon in Uckfield with her business partner. Twelve years later, she bought her partner out and Claire Davies Hairdressing was born. It immediately flourished and quickly became a centre of hairdressing excellence, service quality, and good value. Her lively influence and strong managerial skills sustain a staff of 17, many of whom have worked there almost as long as she has.
Claire’s unique approach is a mixture of creative enterprise, inspiring leadership, and caution about extending the business too far and wide: “businesses often go wrong when they expand too much”. Constant training is part of the job for the very good reason that the salon’s splendid record of dedication, consistency, and quality must be maintained. Upstairs is their dedicated Hair Spa, with a full range of personalised hair treatments using the Luxury Kerastase hair care range.
There have been low moments, for example when the Uckfield flood, whose 25th anniversary was last month, put the salon and most of the High Street under several feet of water after days and nights of torrential rain. The building was one of the worst hit by the surge of water and was shut for ten days of drying out and replacing damaged equipment and furniture.
Since Covid, employment patterns have changed, not necessarily to the benefit of employers. A new generation is influencing work patterns and consumer behaviour, and the government isn’t helping with its well-meaning but misguided attempts to dictate salaries and trainees’ pay as well as its small-business tax increases.
Claire, an experienced and skilled manager, has a flexible approach to the different needs of her staff. Not surprisingly this is reflected in the care the staff take to satisfy the needs of their customers.
Good business is an unbroken circle when there is a satisfied workforce, good leadership and a consistently high-quality service. This is the combination that generates stability and success for retail businesses, whatever the Government or the River Uck might decide to do.