Hair salon traffic steady during COVID

Traffic is steady at area hair salons, report salon owners, with clients begging for appointments around the holidays just like in previous years.
“We’re always crazy busy,” said Kitsie Robinson, owner at Hair Games in Byron. Salon traffic has been steady since the salon reopened June 1 after the statewide salon shut down in the spring ordered by Gov. Tim Walz.
Sanitation is vital at area salons, and they’re only allowed 50 percent capacity. “That’s been hard as well,” Robinson said. “We’ve had to turn away a few people. We can’t fit as many people as we want to. We’re pretty booked up.”
Hair Games customer Jan Fitzgerald said during the salon shut down from March to June, she took matters into her own hands and did her own colors. Earlier this month she was in at Hair Games getting “the works,” with a color and a cut.
At Creative Change Hair Studio & Spa in Mantorville, traffic is also brisk. “When we first opened up after the initial closure, it was crazy of course,” said co-owner Karrie Berg. “Since then it’s become steady. It’s changed in that people aren’t as frantic. Everybody is way more patient. Our clients have been absolutely wonderful.”
Berg said business has shifted, however. They can’t book as many clients as pre pandemic, but clients have been “nothing but accommodating,” she said. “They’re wonderful. For us it’s been a decent year. Overall we feel we’re doing pretty much the same as we were doing last year. It’s just a little differently done.”
Salons have always had to sanitize, so that’s no different from the past, Berg said. “Salons have done an outstanding job of keeping their places clean, and we’re trying to do our best so we can stay open,” she said.At Mane Image in Kasson, owner Annette Carlson said the holiday season has been a bit different at her salon. “Typically we would be crazy with phone calls and people coming in and grabbing gift certificates,” Carlson said. “It has been a steady stream but not the mad rush of everybody rushing in to get stuff.”
Carlson said people aren’t getting dolled up because they don’t have the regular seasonal holiday parties to go to. She doesn’t see the “stampede” that she usually sees at her salon during the holiday season.
“Maybe the flow will be delayed,” she said. “I think people will be coming in.”