CHEPACHET – While at times it has seemed that the stars are aligned against her, Alyssa Scotto says she has never been willing to give up, and now, her resilience is finally starting to pay off.
Scotto, a Burrillville native, first opened Beauty’s Edge Salon on East Avenue across from the Harrisville Dam five years ago.
But after two successful years in business, tragedy struck. Scotto’s daughter suffered a major injury in a horseback riding accident.
“At the time I was a single mom,” she said, noting that she had to make the difficult choice to close the business in 2017 to care for her family.
A stylist with more than a dozen years experience working in local salons and taking part in competitions in the Boston area, Scotto returned to her former employer: Tuscan Salon in Slatersville. She would remain there for the next two years.
In 2020, Scotto made a plan to once again branch out on her own, securing a space in Chepachet to open Beauty’s Edge II. After months of preparation, she opened the salon’s doors on Wednesday, March 4.
No one could predict that soon after, a pandemic would bring the local economy to a halt.
“We were open three weeks before having to shut down,” she said. “It was brutal, to say the least.”
She notes that the weeks that followed were a very dark time.
“You can’t help but it hitting you personally,” she said. “I had three weeks where I didn’t want to get off the couch.”
But after a period of mourning the strange turn of fortune, Scotto, like so many business owners across America, brushed herself off, and found new ways to reach out to her customers – even during a time of physical separation. With the help of social media, she began holding raffles and posting live videos to interact with her clientele.
She notes she was, “blown away,” by the response.
“The support that came in… you couldn’t feel more loved,” she said. “That’s 100 percent why I do what I do.”
“I have too much in it to let it go,” she added of the business. “We didn’t do this just to give up.”
And on Monday, June 1, the salon reopened.
Now, she notes, the business, located on Putnam Pike in the same plaza as Aegean Pizza, is thriving. In just two short months, Scotto has expanded the salon, hiring three more stylists, all from Burrillville.
“We’ve come back stronger than I ever could have imagined,” she said.
Scotto credits her loyal clientele with the business’s recent success.
“I have to say, considering all that’s happened, I have an amazing support system,” she said. “I have amazing clients. They really become like extended family. It was them who made sure we still had this place.”
Things now, she notes, are different. But in many ways, the stressful times have brought that extended family even closer together, and allowed her to offer her patrons much more than just a quality hair cut or color.
“It’s nice that people can come in, and relax, and they feel good,” Scotto said. “We can be that little bit of normalcy and peace. I’ve never felt so needed.”
The stylist notes that to keep her clients safe, she’s following protocol, from safety screenings for each customer, to constant hand washing, disinfecting and changing of capes.
“We take the extra step for security for our clients,” she said. “I never thought Clorox and Lysol would end up being part of my display in a salon.”
When a representative from the state Department of Health dropped in last week, she notes that the business was 100 percent in compliance.
“They were extremely impressed with how clean the salon was,” Scotto said.
Now, her staff includes a barber, and stylists with more than 15 years experience.
And she’s having a great time.
“We have so much fun in here,” she said. “When people come in, they all say that they love the space, and the atmosphere, and the energy. They don’t feel judged.”
Part of that fun has been dealing with the what Scotto called the “Covid cuts and colors,” the hairstyles clients created on their own during the months of state-mandated closure. She notes she’s been creating an album of before and after photos.
“We’ve seen a lot, from green, to spotted, to lopsided,” she said.
And while in pre-Covid-19 times, her clients may have felt stressed or embarrassed about their hair, now they too are having fun.
“Now they come in and laugh,” she said.
Scotto notes that a bit of business savvy runs in her family: her father owns Burrillville-based Hopkins Brothers Auto Repair and Northeast Auto.
“I’ve called him, I don’t know how many times,” she said. “It turns out, it’s not easy opening a salon during a pandemic.”
With a sense of humor and gratitude, Scotto says she’s now optimistic about the business’s future.
“I didn’t really expect this to take off as much as it did. We’ll see where time takes us,” she said. “We came out on top. We will get through this.”
Beauty’s Edge Salon II at 1195C Putnam Pike in Chepachet is accepting new and returning customers by appointment Tuesday through Saturday. To make yours, call (401) 710-3456 or email beautysedgesalon@yahoo.com
