Sitdown with Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. This month’s subject is Mike and Charla Johnson of Terrame Day Spa and Salons.

It began in 1990 as a conversation between brothers Mike Johnson, the business consultant, and Jeff Johnson, a veteran of the hair styling industry.

Mike was also having a conversation with his future business partner Charla, about marrying him. Jeff had returned from California where he was seeing a popular new trend in hair salons arise –salon in back, large retail store in front.

In 1992, the Johnson family with newlyweds Charla and Mike opened The Beauty Market in the Stadium Place Shopping Center next to Joe Davis Stadium.

Today, Mike and Charla, along with Mike’s brothers Jeff and Charles, have expanded that concept into three Terramé Day Spa and Salons in Huntsville and Madison, with the newest on Madison Boulevard the largest freestanding hair salon and day spa in Alabama, excluding hotel and resort spas.

How did the concept for Terramé begin?

Mike Johnson – In 1990, we started talking about what does a family business look like? How do we build on great family relationships to start a family business? It took a year of talking and planning and the 1990s was a different time in Huntsville than it is today.

It was a risk for us – a calculated risk – but we definitely rolled the dice and opened The Beauty Market in the Stadium Place shopping center at Joe Davis Stadium.

It had Jeff’s idea of a hair salon in the back and a retail store upfront. The concept had not made it to the Southeast or even to the East Coast yet. No one else was doing it at the time, so it was a bold new venture.

That one was doing so well, so we opened a second one in the Publix Shopping Center on Madison Boulevard. It just started growing and we said, “What is next?”

Was that how Terramé Salon and Day Spa was born?

Mike Johnson – In the 2000s, day spas were becoming a big trend, but again, no one was really doing it here.

We bought a piece of land in Jones Valley. It was still a wilderness out there with a CVS on the corner and our land. Cecil Ashburn Drive wasn’t opened yet, and here we were off the Parkway, away from the hub of everything, but it was all we could afford so we implemented our strategy to offer high-end products and services.

It took everything we had, but with a bit of luck and amazing people, our strategy worked, and it was a hit. We wanted to be the best in town, so we just had that mindset right from the start. Merge that with being the first of its kind in Alabama and being something new, and it just worked.

The aesthetics professions and the hair salon industry most specifically are known for high turnover. How do you handle that?

Mike Johnson – Our secret sauce, if you will, is 100 percent our people. I think our people are really the things we are most proud. Everything we do is about making sure our employees are taken care of. From how we treat them each day, to how we handle a crisis.

But I would say our management style and the culture is also important and it ties into our people. It is just different from most people in the industry.

We now have 140 to 150 employees and 99 percent of them are women. We want them to be financially strong, secure women, who can support their own family and who don’t need to rely on someone else to take care of them. We want them to be successful and they are.

Charla Johnson – I think our employees feel cared for. One of our stylists has been with us six years. She has basically grown up here, but she is a different person than she was when she came here.

She is very competent and strong – a fearless woman now, but she was not that way when she started. We have a culture here of taking care of each other and that culture becomes a mindset that the employees guard at all costs.

Mike Johnson – Mine and Charla’s approach to management is different from any other business. We wake up every morning knowing our job is to make our employees successful. There’s no ego, there’s no ‘I’m the boss’ attitude and as a result, we rarely have employee issues.

Not only are we a family business, but our employees are part of that one big family.

We want our employees to be financially successful and that is an important part of our mission.

What challenges have you faced in your 18 years in business?

Mike Johnson – There are always nerves involved in starting a new business, but we were never scared. We had a plan and we believed in that plan.

Of course, there are always times when you must think about finances a lot, but we have never had a real crisis.

Back when the tornadoes hit (April 2011), we were shut down for a week because Huntsville had no power. There has been lots of those kinds of things.

Charla Johnson – We had a fire at Jones Valley in the salon’s upstairs laundry room. The fire did $50 worth damage and the sprinklers did $5,000 worth water damage. We were closed for less than a week during that time, but we still paid our employees while we were closed. It wasn’t their fault what happened, so it seemed important to do so.

Mike Johnson – That said, in our lifetime, COVID has been the hardest thing we have had to deal with. The governor shut us down for a while, and we know it rocked a lot of businesses, but we took on the word “resilience” as our word of the year last year, and this year.

We had just laid the concrete slab for this new location, but we never considered or thought about stopping and as a result, we came out of it in a great position.

We talked to our employees everyday throughout the crisis We didn’t lose any staff over it and all of our employees were taken care of, and that made us stronger in the end.

What advice do you have for anyone starting a business?

Mike Johnson – Aside from COVID, I think most importantly, if I were starting a business today, I would make 100 percent sure I knew what my niche was.

You can be high-end, or you can provide an economy product or service. But if you get caught in the middle, you get crushed.

Once you get your financial team together, lawyers, accountants, etc., you must know who you are. What is your niche? How are you going to take care of customers? How are you going to take care of your employees?

People who don’t figure that out, always flounder. It’s hard to grow without a very distinct vision.

If we were 20 years old again and we were building a business with COVID in the background, it would have been harder not having the experiences we have had the past 18 years. I think we have developed the confidence to be able to handle that, when a new business might not.

But you cannot quit. We have too many people who depend on us. We have been doing this for so long, resilience is a learned ability. You never know what is coming so you must roll with it.

Terrame’ is almost like a department store when you walk in. Is that intentional?

Mike Johnson – We want to ensure we match our retail to our vision of a high-end provider.

What we have in the retail store are called prestige lines. They are high-end products and have high-end ingredients, from the shampoos to the cosmetics and skin care.

Charla Johnson – When it comes to the retail, we have to zoom in a little bit to get down into the detail. Some of it is trial and error. I spent a lot of time creating the jewelry and gift item lines like handbags and the candles. I buy things, wear them, or use them first to ensure they are high quality.

We want to create a place where people feel they cannot just get their hair done, but they can leave with a birthday gift, a Mother’s Day gift, or an anniversary gift, and we want to make it easy for them.

Mike Johnson – And our customers are asking for those things too. We ask customers, what do you want, and they have told us – I need gifts for this or that, things I need or want as a woman.