Grow Salon expands with new barbershop, continues to give back in community events
By Kailyn Lamb, Marketing Content Writer and Editor, PYA
For Grow Salon Owner Shane Archer, running his own business is a way to provide his staff with an avenue to further their careers.
It’s an option Archer felt he didn’t have early in his own career. After several years of working in different Knoxville salons, he said he would hit a point where he was no longer able to advance.
“While I had learned a lot, I had kind of maxed out,” Archer said. “At 24, 25 years old, I could never make any more money and that was a hard place to be.”
What Archer calls Grow 1.0 opened on Kingston Pike around six years ago. The business was in that location for five years before he found a new and larger location, where the business is now. Grow has been in this location off Kingston Pike and Ben Atchley Street since September 2020.
The new space more than doubled the square footage the first Grow location had. Archer said the business first started with seven employees and now has 32. In January, he expanded the business to include a barbershop.
“The whole point of the name ‘Grow’ is because nobody had ever encouraged me to do that before,” he said. “Nobody encouraged me behind the chair to have no limits and see where I could expand my creativity.”
Stylists working at Grow are encouraged to do just that. Archer said he has a career path and education set up at the salon so stylists can continue expanding their skill set and payment options. This is a benefit for the customer too, he said. Because the salon has six payment tiers, Grow services can fit into different budgets.
The name of the business also ties into Archer’s goals to grow the Knoxville community. Each stylist working at the salon picks a cause or charity that is important to them to give back to through fundraisers or community outreach. Over the last few years, Archer and his team have raised more than $50,000 for various programs in Knoxville.
Before Grow moved into its second location and the space was being built out, Archer said it was important to him to have that space no matter the cost or time it took to build. He had always envisioned it as a private space for charity events or specific client consultations such as bridal events. By having a separate space for events, the salon downstairs can remain open and events can still be private.
The salon currently has a goal to build a house for Habitat for Humanity in the spring or summer of 2023. First, he and his team have to raise $40,000. Keep an eye out for future coverage on Habitat from teknovation.biz.
Raising funds for the community is something Archer has carried over from his days working in a prior salon before starting Grow.
“As a community of stylists and of salons, if every hair salon or every hairstylist just picked one thing that was important to them, imagine how much more you could do,” he said. “I’ve got 30 stylists. That could potentially be 30 different organizations in Knoxville.”
Archer said the success of the salon’s charity fundraising is largely due to the clientele at the business. When he started Grow, Archer said he was very conscious of how he wanted to treat employees, giving them a creative space to grow in their field. But he also had very specific ideas about how the guests of his salon are treated. People coming to the salon get not only hair services but a relaxing experience. In the lather lounge where guests have their hair shampooed, for example, aromatherapy is used in the room. It is a quiet, more spa-like space that has a different feel than the rest of the salon.
“We want to be like the Ritz Carlton of hair salons,” Archer said. “We really did it with our guests in mind.”
