Salon owner letting her hair down for retirement

“It’s been ongoing for a long time,” Riley said. “I’ve thought about [retiring] for a long time, and our accountant brought it up 10 years ago about making plans for it. He kind of laid out what position the business needed to be in to make that happen.”

After opening the Hair Shed, the business gradually kept expanding, eventually evolving from a shed to a salon. “For one reason or another, we just kept adding on, and it is what it is today,” Riley explained. “It started out as 900 square-feet, and now it 6,400 square-feet. It’s taken on a life of its own.”

This year, Strawberry Mountain Salon reached its selling point, and with the business in good condition Riley decided the time was right to sell.

“When I decided to retire, I offered the salon part of the business to Heather [Cruse], one of our main hairstylists, and she just went with it.” Cruse worked at Strawberry Mountain Salon for eight years before accepting Riley’s offer to buy the business.

On June first, Cruse will reopen the once Strawberry Mountain Salon as Salon 78. The name is a tribute to the opening year of Riley’s Hair Shed.

“She’s just basically gutting everything out,” said Riley. “She has gone to town.” The salon is closed while the space is being revamped with a fresh coat of paint, and reorganized by Cruse before next week’s opening.

The process of selling the business has left a lot of cleaning up to do for Becky and Connie, “It’s a big change, it’s huge actually.” One thing that will remain the same, despite the new name and interior, will be the staff cutting hair at Salon 78.

Riley is more than happy to set aside the long hours of running a business and is looking forward to having free time again.

“I have years of projects that have been set aside,” she noted. “My husband and I would like to do a lot of camping. We bought a little 1956 Aloha camp trailer, and we’ve taken a couple of trips all ready. We really like to go out in that. We like camping a lot.”

One project Riley has in mind, is turning the salon’s service rooms in to short-term leased apartments. “We’re going to revamp the area into living space, and make bedrooms out of service rooms,” Riley explained. “We’re not going to do the Airbnb thing. I mean because that’s too much turn over, but we know there’s a housing need for temporary people who are coming in and out.”

“It’s a play it by ear deal, about what is really going to work out in the long term.” With Riley’s retirement, the general management of the business will be passed on to Becky Hamilton.

“People think retirement is just, oh you chose a date and you retire, but it’s a little harder than just throwing the keys at everybody and saying, ‘see yah later,’” Riley said with a laugh. Riley attributes her successful transition to retirement to Hamilton’s ability to take over management of the businesses within their building.

“It’s been kind of bittersweet, because I’ve had it for so long, but I can’t be more pleased that Heather’s doing it,” she said. “It’s like it was meant to be.”