the sunniest place in portland
we wanted to create the sunniest place in portland, a place where you wouldn’t get burned, but rather a place that you could leave feeling refreshed, confident, and overall just a little brighter—after all we do specialize in blonding.
that’s how yello was born in the quarantine summer of 2020. kaylee, who’s the owner and my girlfriend, had been put on unemployment (along with the rest of us at that moment) which gave her and i plenty of time to spend together in lock down. we began searching for new salons that she could apply at that were fun, bright, colorful and you know, something that matched her personality. after tons of research and coming up with only a handful of salons that still fell short, we decided to go all in on creating something of our own.
making yello
aside from wanting a fun, bright, and colorful space, it was important for us to create something that truly represented how we viewed the world. simply put, we want to be nice to people. when we say people, our first thought wasn’t necessarily customers, but rather our employees. we want our stylists to not only make a great paycheck, we want them to have a great life which means the pay needs to cover more than their bare necessities. it needs to be a wage that enables them to take work off, travel, spend time with family and friends—to do life.
reshaping the industry
in order for us to offer our stylists better pay we had to get creative. we introduced the option for stylists to be either commission (50/50) or independent (rent a chair) under the yello brand which gave them stability, room to grow, and better yet, a much higher pay that we're proud to say is well above a livable wage.
introducing retail
retail has always been a part of our identity, but we never thought it would be such a critical piece to our business model. it's what helps keep everyday costs down that would otherwise be passed along to our stylists through lower commission rates and higher chair rentals. instead, we've been able to expand upon our retail and continue to keep expenses to a minimum, so thank you for trusting us with your hair and using our products. you're what our business model is built on and the reason we can proudly call it the sunniest place in portland :)
xoxo,
