- October 23, 2021
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VIP Beauty Bar, at the corner of Saginaw and Stark roads, will have a grand opening on Thursday, Nov. 4. (Photo provided by Halie Philipp)
VIP Beauty Bar, at the corner of Saginaw and Stark roads, will have a grand opening on Thursday, Nov. 4. (Photo provided by Halie Philipp)
VIP Beauty Bar, at the corner of Saginaw and Stark roads, will have a grand opening on Thursday, Nov. 4. (Photo provided by Halie Philipp)
VIP Beauty Bar, at the corner of Saginaw and Stark roads, will have a grand opening on Thursday, Nov. 4. (Photo provided by Halie Philipp)
According to its owner, Midland’s newest salon, VIP Beauty Bar, has a versatile staff that goes to great lengths to create the kind of welcoming environment that everyone can feel comfortable in.
Salon owner Halie Philipp has been through a circuitous journey that took her to Maryland (where she graduated from beauty school after some starts and stops) for a couple of years. She is now back in Midland after deciding that working for others just wasn’t going to cut it for her.
“My whole life, I knew I wanted to be a business owner,” Philipp said. “I just didn’t know what field of expertise to go into.”
She once was enrolled in Delta College’s physical therapist assisting program. She then switched course to become a hair stylist. Philipp worked at salons, first in Maryland and later in Midland, before she and her fiancé decided to return permanently to a city where she has spent most of her life.
“Life,” Philipp said, explaining her reason for returning home. “Beauty school was rough. I worked at Super Cuts in Maryland for a couple of months and discovered my passion wasn’t just in hair.”
Philipp googled “lash extensions” and ended up driving to Grand Rapids for a Paul Mitchell eyelash extension class in March of 2020. She did one lash extension, on her sister, “before the world shut down due to COVID. I had a new skill and I could only practice it on a mannequin head. Anyone in our industry knows that is just not the same.”
Now, she and her co-workers, Samantha Nortley, and Lexus Weedon, are slowly but surely outfitting their VIP Beauty Bar, located at the corner of Saginaw and Stark Roads, in anticipation of a Thursday, Nov. 4 grand opening/ribbon cutting ceremony.
“I tell people we are comfortably out of town,” she said. “The salon was empty when I took over and I’ve started it piece by piece. I transferred my clients on July 1. If I made $50 or a $100 in a day, I would purchase what I could, be it mirrors, salon chairs and shampoo bowls. It’s shaping up now.”
Philipp specializes in a number of beauty procedures, including lash extensions, eyebrow tinting and waxing, brow laminations, teeth whitening and lash lifts. Weedon is the resident expert in skin care and body waxing, while Nortley specializes in hair coloring and cuts.
They each share a common goal to respect and value each client as an individual.
“We value this place as a safe space where people can come in and be comfortable with who they are,” Philipp said. “I have really instilled the importance of establishing and valuing relationships. There’s a lot going on with raising awareness of Black Lives Matter, mental health and the LGBTQ community. We want to respect that.”
Philipp is driven to establish a caring and inclusive environment at VIP Beauty Bar through her personal relationships with members of the LGBTQ community, some of whom she said have felt ostracized for how they present themselves.
“We care about the LGBTQ community,” she said. “I know people that felt judged when they went in for a gender-affirming haircut or hair removal. People close to me in this community have had bad experiences. I’ve seen the effect that this can have on them.”
That’s why being a stylist often involves being more than a technician. Like a bartender who often serves as a listening ear as a customer downs drinks and spins tales of woe, “People come in to get work done and the next thing you know they are crying,” Philipp said. “A lot of people are going through heavy stuff and just spill it. Everyone’s going through something.”
VIP Beauty Bar’s grand opening/ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 4 begins at 4 p.m. The new salon will raffle off three service packages and will also have goodie bags and a photo booth.
The salon has been seeing clients for a couple of weeks.
“It’s going pretty well,” Philipp said. “We started out slowly, but business is starting to pick up. The word is getting out and we’re beginning to do more advertising.”
There have been some bumps in the road, but Philipp is now the entrepreneur she always wanted to be.
“I wanted more freedom to do things my way,” she said.
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