We had the good fortune of connecting with Kristal Pitts and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristal, how do you think about risk?
In my opinion, risk taking is the the thing all business owners have in common. It’s scary to open up a business, let alone, even allow yourself to imagine you can be successful running one. Taking risks has been the sole driver of our company. I woke up one day, felt I could do everything I was doing for another company on my own and went for it. It happened so fast, with not much thought behind it, but I had this overwhelming feeling of belief in myself. Both my sister and I have really strong support from our family, which I feel allows us to feel free to take risks. Once we opened our first salon it was just risk after risk for us. We were doing well and had an opportunity to expand and went for it. Then another opportunity came around and we went for that too. I feel that most people, doing as well as we were for ourselves, would have just stopped there but we know if you don’t take a risk you have to live with the thought of “what if.”

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Haus of Wax Corporation has two branches, Haus of Wax which is a full body waxing salon in Rancho Cucamonga and Haus of Nails which is a full service nail and waxing salon in Fontana. My sister (Raquelle- 26) and I (Kristal- 29) own and operate both salons cohesively. We opened our first location in Rancho Cucamonga in 2016. It was a small 754 sq ft salon with 3 waxing rooms, one office, and one bathroom. I worked there for a year by myself with 4 front desk coordinators before I hired my first wax specialist employee. My sister would come in on the weekends to help run the front desk as she was still finishing up getting her cosmetology license at the time. In 2018, we were doing well in terms of staffing and finances so we figured it was time to start looking for a second location to house both our waxing services and my sisters nail services. She was licensed and had gotten her feet wet with some other nail salons and we were ready to to take on the industry together. We found a company that was building in the Fontana area and they were going to have a 1500sq ft store front available. The build out was supposed to be completed at the end of 2018 but there were some hiccups and long story short, we didn’t get the keys to the new location until November of 2019. During the time of us waiting for this new location, we were presented an opportunity to expand our current location due to a neighboring lease ending. We weren’t sure when the new location would be ready so we jumped at this opportunity and turned our 754 sq ft store front into 1600 sq feet, housing 5 wax rooms, an office, a storage room, a break room, and two bathrooms. Three months later we finally got the keys to the second location and went to work creating a space for nails, pedicures and waxing. We opened our doors in November of 2019 and had our grand opening in February of 2020. We had faced few struggles up to this point but for the most part Haus of Wax Corporation was on the rise. In March of 2020 we were faced with the pandemic and in the blink of an eye everything changed. We lost majority of our employees and had to essentially start over. We have yet to see as good of a year as we had in 2019 but we finally feel that we are at a good place again. We now employee a total of 30 women between both locations and are hoping to expand to other cities. It wasn’t always easy but we have always been able to overcome the challenges we’ve been faced with because we have such a great support system and we lead with kindness. I want our story to be the one where ” the nice guy doesn’t finish last.”

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My sister and I would agree that our parents deserve the most credit for where we are today. Our dad works in construction and takes care of building anything and everything we need to run our salons. He also is a big emotional support. He really pushes us to go for it. He’s not a mushy gushy personality, he’s more real, raw and honest, which is nice because when you want to know if your thoughts or ideas are good you go to him for the truth. He won’t hold back, he won’t sugar coat it, he really is the ideal dad for two entrepreneurial daughters. Our mom, on the other hand, is the backbone of our family. She’s the mediator, the caretaker, the one to really make sure things are getting done. Even all the girls at the salon call her “momager.” She has a background in sales and customer service which makes me feel like this business was meant to happen! She helps us with the financial part of the business and does so much in the back scenes all while working her full time job. Both of our parents have worked so hard to provide a good life for us and set up a path where we can be successful and we can’t thank them enough.

Website: www.hausofwax.net

Instagram: @hausofwaxx @hausofnailss

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