Established: 3 Years, 4 Months
Location: Richmond, Nelson
Contact Name: Jade Gosling
Website: www.pureopulence.co.nz
Business mission and vision:
To provide the people of Nelson/Tasman with an environment where they can not only get high-end beauty treatments carried out by qualified beauty professionals, but they can do so in a friendly yet professional salon environment with a warm welcome that can only come from a smaller family business.
“Luxury spa & beauty treatments by internationally qualified beauty professionals”
Our team. We have the BEST team of ladies here at Pure Opulence Day Spa. We’re not only a highly skilled bunch of beauty professionals but we all get along SO well and I think this is extremely evident to our clients. Once clients get to know us all they feel like part of the Pure Opulence family as well – Our client relationships are very important to us!
We were runners up in the Kiwi Business Heroes Awards back in 2020 and placed 4th in 2021…So fingers crossed for a win this year.
Kelly & I always wanted to own a business together ever since we were teenagers. Being that Kelly studied to become a beauty therapist and I completed a bachelor of commerce along with my first nail technician certificate it made sense for us to open a beauty salon – So that’s what we did.
It’s been hard at times – particularly opening straight off the back of a global pandemic, which is what we did. We were meant to open during the first lockdown in 2020 but our grand opening was delayed until we came out of lockdown. That was our first obstacle, we even for a second questioned if we should open at all – But our determination soon took over and we just went for it. Naturally the lockdown’s flow-on affects also impacted our business with things such as having our plant and inventory delayed with delivery times, which affected the treatments we were able to provide straight away due to not having all the equipment we’d ordered as expected. Building up a clientele large enough to sustain and pay the bills was also a challenge – One that we worked very hard on once we opened and still do to this day in order to grow our business.
As mentioned previously – The whole lead up to our initial grand opening. We overcome every single hurdle that the lockdown and it’s flow-on effects threw at us which was even more challenging because we were a brand-new start-up business. Everything from not having pedicure chairs and nail tables for our grand opening through to stock being delayed and having to limit the treatments we were able to offer until the appropriate shipments turned up. This in itself was a struggle, made even worse we were a new establishment trying to grab any new business that came our way, and sometimes being unable to do so through no fault of our own. Securing a premises and signing contracts for power, internet & phone etc but not being able to open was also a financially challenging time, as we had outgoings but literally no money coming in due to not being able to open yet. Navigating through this was definitely challenging but our positive attitudes and being able to adapt to the circumstances is definitely what got us through.
Our business is very much a small family one, with us two sisters being the owners. We have always had a wonderful sister relationship and also an extremely tight-knit family of support as we grew up with our Mum and Nana. It’s safe to say Mum & Nana are our biggest supporters and always have been. During the whole process of opening the salon through to keeping everything ticking along, Mum and Nana were always there for us, supporting us in any way they could. When we first opened we were a small team of two and unfortunately only 6 months after we opened our salon Nana passed away. This not only shook our whole family with the devastation and emotion that comes with loosing a close family member but also threatened the business, because both Kelly and I had lost one of our parents that we were extremely close to. Being such a small team meant that closing the salon was a huge loss of income, which directly cut our grieving with our family extremely short – to 3 days. Perseverance (and a lot of support) is what allowed us to push through and remain open for business during this horrific time of loss. We had each other, and a strong will to made it work – Something that we KNOW Nana would have wanted for us, and we’re so incredibly pleased that we did – We hope we’ve made her proud!
I guess that depends on how you measure success? I believe we have been successful in attracting the most wonderful bunch of ladies to work for us that we could ever have asked for – We are incredibly blessed with our team, and funnily enough, the same can be said for our clients. We genuinely have the best clients ever – We truly care about them, as they do us. Financially our business has grown year on year, as well as our team – going from a team of 2 to the awesome team of 5 we have today. We have worked hard to build our business up to be able to afford new plant and equipment that has allowed us to expand on our offerings – which could also be measured as success. Our business decisions and determination also helped us secure a more prime location when we moved premises which has in-turn also made us more successful and busier than ever.
Our wonderful team and clients. Just thinking about how much we’ve achieved together genuinely warms our hearts.
We try to support local when it comes to contractors so everything from our accountant through to our window cleaner and electrician are also smaller scale businesses such as ourselves.
We pride ourselves on continual training and upskilling whenever possible. Over the past three years there have been many times where our team will attend training days – whether it be to gain new knowledge in products we use/sell such as Sothys skincare or learning new skills, such as our employees completing the Lola Lee nail courses to be able to provide new services to our clients.
SO MANY – All over our facebook and Google my business pages.
A real sense of community comes from dealing with clients day in-day out. You get to know your clients extremely well and they make our jobs so much more rewarding. It feels wonderful when people recommend our business to others too, because they wouldn’t do so if they didn’t love the service(s) that we offer. We are also proud of building our business up to the point where we can employ others and keep them in work which feels great too.
In the past we have been involved with the Nelson Tasman Hospice – Donating vouchers for the terminally ill, their careers and the Hospice workers to enjoy a bit of pampering amongst what they’re going through. More recently we’ve been supporting small, local establishments by way of donations and prizes such as the Dress up Box, Nelson North Country Club and the Tahunanui Community Hub brain tumor support bingo night.
Being a small business we appreciate the hard work that goes into keeping a business going, therefore we do our best to support as many other small, local businesses as possible. Many of our clients are also in business and we do our best to spread the word and send business their way too. We even have a shelf in the salon where we display some of their business cards such as real estate, hairdressers, personal trainers, painters, hair care & makeup. In-fact the Hair care & Make-up brands that we stock in salon: Halo Hair Society and Basalaj Beauty are both founded by local Nelsonians, and it’s great to be an outlet and supporter of these amazing products and getting our clients onto them too.
We feel like we are a solid representation of what the hard working kiwi looks like. There are many ups and downs in business but we get on with it, make the most of life and learn from our challenges in order to become bigger and better. We love our team, our clients and our community and would like to pay thanks for the opportunity to enter the Kiwi Business Heroes Awards again this year and thank you for reading & considering our entry.
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