Salon H2O offers great haircuts along with plenty of care and consideration
STATEN ISLAND, NY – GRANT CITY
- If you’re not sure what to do next with your hairstyle, consider putting yourself in able hands at Salon H20.
The small-scale Grant City shop offers highly personalized services and stylists who relish the chance to suggest looks fitted to individual clients.
Less than a year ago, stylist
Ziada Sinanovic
of Dongan Hills, who owns the salon with her husband,
Fejzo
, decided to start her own business to be close to her kids,
Sabrina
and Nihad.
It turned out that she also created a second family.
Amy Clare
of Midland Beach, the high school student in charge of shampoos, didn’t hesitate to say what makes Salon H20 unique: “Teamwork,” she said. “Everyone here helps each other out. That’s rare.”
When she started out, Ms. Sinanovic, then 33, launched and operated the business on her own.
Her 12-year-old daughter, Sabrina, acted as unofficial consultant: She actually located the Hylan Boulevard salon space while walking home from Egbert Intermediate School, and she gave the final OK on decisions like the salon’s name and its interior design.
“I like to hang out here all the time,” she said last week. “We order food and make jokes and Tommy helps me with my homework.”
Tommy Schiavone
of Bulls Head, 23, pours attention on Sabrina, offering tutoring and companionship, even driving her to soccer practice.
Along with
Nicole Ferolano
of Dongan Hills, Schiavone was recently hired to expand the business that is faced with the challenge of growing its clientele during tough economic times.
One industry study conducted by Professional Consultants and Resources in 2008 showed that salon industry growth was at an historic low of 2.8 percent.
Yet Ms. Sinanovic – whose most regular customer,
Nellie Garcia
of Fort Wadsworth, has been following her for 17 years – feels confident that any first-time client will become a long-term one.
At the front of the store, the stylists offer photo albums showcasing haircuts they’ve done at the salon – real cuts for real people, rather than books full of hair sculptures suited for the runway.
Ms. Ferolano specializes in updos and coloring; Schiavone is a masterful cutter;
Maggie Abdelhamid
offers manicures, pedicures and gently executed waxes at the salon, and Ms. Sinanovic, who has been a stylist for half of her life, does everything, but specializes in blow-outs.
Clients are loyal because of the atmosphere, too, the salon owner said.
“We work as a family,” said Ms. Sinanovic. “Clients feel like they’re at home.”
“We give love and TLC,” added Schiavone. “One of our clients said the cutest thing when she got out of the chair. She said, ‘You’re Staten Island’s best kept secret.”
Ms. Sinanovic frequently treats a client to coffee or even lunch while waiting for color to set.
Ms. Sinanovic and Schiavone both are graduates of the Learning Institute for Beauty Sciences, Brooklyn, and have years of experience, but both continue to build on their education to keep up with new trends and techniques.
The salon also gives to the community; this month, they are hosting a raffle to benefit Locks of Love, the non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children who have lost theirs to illness. Salon H20 has also signed up to donate hair clippings to Matter of Trust, the San Francisco-based agency that is using hair and nylons to create “sponges” suited for cleaning oil spills like that in the Gulf of Mexico.
The salon is located at 2026 Hylan Boulevard; find them online at
, or on Facebook.