Retail is crucial to your Hair Salon: Myriam K Paris

“The biggest haircare myth is, don’t  wash your hair very often because it can cause immense hair fall. Now this is wrong, you have to wash your hair every time the scalp is oily so you can let the hair bulb breathe”,  a light-hearted zoom conversation started with a helpful tip from this famous French Hair care specialist turned retailer Myriam Keramane.  We can all agree that haircare requires immense patience, practice and meticulous attention to the chemicals and formulas you’re putting on your hair. Over the years, lawyer-turned-hairstylist Myriam honed her skills as a hair colour specialist and created her own formulas and solutions, including one of the first keratin treatments. Today, her range of high-performing hair products has made her a favourite retailer in France too and across the world – each product ensuring the best quality ingredients deliver the best possible results.

Myriam is the typical example of an entrepreneurial journey starting from scratch. Influencer, entrepreneur and expert in hairstyles, she made a name for herself in the French haircare industry from a very early stage. “It wasn’t easy to start from scratch, but I am proud to say I managed to succeed and have a well-known name in France. I had to be patient and work very hard to earn the trust of the professionals, my clients and retail customers. I have had the fortune to meet VIPs and celebrities that helped me a lot and motivated me in my work and I am extremely thankful to them. My success today, I owe it to working hard, professional expertise that I have acquired over the years and a bit of luck. Being an entrepreneur also means being able to take risks without the certainty of success, so now I am taking on the risk of coming to Dubai to try a new adventure”, said Myriam.

Myriam grew up building her interests and curiosity in the beauty & cosmetics world at a very young age. Her main inspiration comes from her mother, who is an entrepreneur too and opened a hair salon without even knowing anything about hair. She succeeded in making it a well-known and famous hair salon in Paris. ” I was born in Algeria and went to to Paris at the age of 10 with my parents. When my mother opened the salon, I was just 18 and was helping her and in the meantime I was studying law. Soon I realized that I completely embraced everything related to hair styling and coloring” recalled Myriam. After pursuing a degree in Law, she then decided to join her mother to grow the spread of her salon. “Retail is an integral part of any salon business and adds another dimension to your client’s overall salon experience. It provides the framework within which we build a trusted advisor relationship with our clients from initial consultation through to the moment they book their next appointment on leaving the salon”, stated Myriam.

“There is no haircare brand having their own boutique and I think it’s very important to have a physical store presence “, exclaimed Myriam. At the age of 22, she went on to do further studies in Brazil for hair dressing, after which she opened her first salon and store in Paris. ” When I opened my first salon I was not just thinking like a hairdresser but I had a vision of having a  brand with multiple salons. Six months after, I opened a second one through a bank loan and in 2 years I had 10 salons around France”. 20 years later Myriam has about 40 salons and the first big salon in the Middle East is opening in September.  “Soon I started selling my products in my salon and it boomed and thought that was the perfect marketing model. Clients were coming from everywhere to even buy my products. So I got salons calling me to sell my products .Then one day a big salon called me from Paris and asked me to sell my products. A year later my products were sold in 20,000 salons in France. Soon I decided to focus on my haircare brand, then I opened a big salon near Champs Elysées which is still now biggest salon and store.”

Multiple research studies have shown that younger people are increasingly reporting hair loss. Especially Dubai’s weather leads to a lot of hairfall and therefore the region has a lot of demand for good haircare products. “There are a lot of different nationalities in the Middle East, and we can find hairstylists from all over the world here: Arab, European, Asian, American. Each hairstylist has different specializations and techniques according to their country of origin. And that’s amazing because the clients can pick and choose according to the expertise and technique they are looking for”, said Myriam.  She already had a Middle Eastern consumer base, that would regularly buy from her French website myriamkparis.me and would come into the showroom in Paris. It was their encouragement and enthusiasm that led her to launch the brand in the region. “Since the demand was growing, as part of the initial plan, I would like to focus on the UAE, and then in the following years, we could look to develop in KSA . I want to get this brand growing beyond France, my vision is to build a salon and sell my products at the same time”, concluded Myriam.