For 8 years, Célia Fouchet has been traveling the roads of the northern Côte d’Or to do her clients’ hair. It is now almost a thing of the past. this milf opened her own hair salon in the small town of Echalot, 50 kilometers north of Dijon. Only Monday mornings will be devoted to home visits. Otherwise, the rest of the week she will be in her living room to try the challenge of setting up the only business in this village of a hundred inhabitants. So how do you keep your customers? Does she hope to revitalize her commune? She answers questions from France Bleu Bourgogne.
France Bleu Bourgogne: Célia Fouchet, after eight years of hairdressing at home, you decide to open a salon and settle in Echalot. Why this choice ?
Celia Fouchet : I like hairdressing at home, but I wanted to be a little more composed and to have a fixed point. In addition, my son will soon be going to school and I wanted to have a little more time for myself and manage to reconcile the two. Before, I traveled a lot, during busy weeks, like Christmas before my holidays, it could go up to 1000 kilometers per week.
In Echalot, a small town in the north of the Côte d’Or with around a hundred inhabitants, you are now the only business. Do you think the bet is risky?
Obviously, it’s not like in Dijon. There are not many inhabitants. But there you go, I think you have to take the risk. We’ll see.
Célia Fouchet, you already had the walls of your living room. But it took a little investment. Up to how much?
I already had a lot of equipment, like scissors, all that type of equipment. But I had to furnish the living room with shampoo basins, it’s about 5000€ of investment.
– Celia Fouchet
Before, you went to your customers, now it’s the opposite. It’s up to her to come to you. Is this clientele ready to follow you?
Yes, again this weekend, we inaugurated the show and I have customers who said to me: “Ah but in the end, I think we’ll come and have our hair done at the salon“. For me, this is proof that there is a demand.
You are opening your salon in a very rural area. Do you hope to energize the sector?
Yes, it is true that there is nothing at all. So it would be good to bring a few businesses to the area so that people who live in the countryside have the right to the same service as people who live in town. In the rest of my projects, I would like to manage to find a beautician, for example, who comes once a week, twice, to come to the salon and offer that as well. This is the next challenge.
The idea is to attract the inhabitants of the village. But is there also the idea of seeing a little further and around?
I would like to have in my clientele more than the people of the village. It’s true that my home-based clientele is quite far apart geographically. I don’t know if the most distant people will come to the program, but the idea is to attract people further than the village.