00:00I'm Tristan, I'm the new creative director of Garbo's South Sea after the closure of 11 to 13 Albert Road in December.
00:10Yeah, so what's going to go a little bit about the history of Garbo's and the industry and just generally?
00:14Yeah, so Garbo's has been going in Portland for over 40 years. It started in New Road under a stylist named Mark, who the owners of Albert Road were quite close to him.
00:25Then he passed away in the 80s of HIV and he left the salon to them on his will.
00:31They had it for 25 years. Those two and Billy Smith, they sort of grew it to be a native in town than it was for the last 25 years.
00:41I think they kind of got close to retirement and didn't quite know how to pass it on to the next generation unfortunately.
00:48So they closed it down and liquidated the company. A couple of months has passed and my colleagues and I, who have been there for over 12 years,
00:58joined forces together and did everything we could pull her back from the rings of death.
01:04Basically the plan is to establish the foundation that existed and kind of throw on that and build it into being Garbo's who deserves to be in the future.
01:14Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've been working for 12 years previously anyway. So how important is it to keep that Garbo's name and keep that Garbo's presence?
01:21Massively important to me. I feel like what Garbo has more than most other salons is the heritage.
01:26Right. And to have been born in the 80s of just like freedom of expression and the time I think that this hair was most exciting probably.
01:35Yeah. To keep that going. To keep that going. To me it's always been really important to be part of a brand that has that longevity in a town where things change so quickly.
01:44You don't often get things back once they've changed. Yeah, yeah.
01:47For me it's, and then more to me they're not realised, I think. And once it went, I'm just a bit lost. I feel like I lost apart myself.
01:55So it feels really good to be back. We're offering out a 20% discount to people returning in the sort of like interim.
02:03Yeah. Which is available by going onto the website.
02:06Yeah. Which is.
02:08Yeah.
02:09So it's not the same as it used to be.
02:11Okay. So that's changed, right?
02:12That's changed. Yeah, yeah. That's changed. We've just tried to shorten it to make it a bit more, a bit easier to remember, you know.
02:18Yeah, yeah. So it's been quite, yeah, did it, quite a lot of work needs to be done to get it to where we are now.
02:21Yeah, it's the salon that was in here previously, only had, for each side of the station, it was locked off into individual rooms.
02:28Yeah.
02:29So unrecognisable as a space.
02:31Okay.
02:32Now that we've changed it, it was, so it feels much bigger and lighter in here now.
02:36And when we kind of like opened up the space and got in the white on the walls. It was too difficult on either side of the room.
02:42Okay.
02:43It was quite jarred.
02:44Didn't want to keep that?
02:45No, I didn't want to carry that. No, no, no. It's a bit of the aesthetic, I believe. It's been salvaged over the years, you know.
02:50Very nice.
02:51It's been very, very exciting.
02:53And it's nice to have the familiarity of what I've noticed about the wind and the new challenge of becoming a creative director and what that looks like before.
03:01Yeah.
03:02So interesting to discover.
03:03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:05So how has it been with customers so far? What's the response been like?
03:08We've had a really good response from just a little bit of marketing that we've done here.
03:12We've sent out an email to people, but it hit the ground running.
03:16Yeah.
03:17The first, I've been fully built since the start, basically.
03:19Oh, really?
03:20Yeah, yeah.
03:21So it's not been, there's been no teeming issues so far, really.
03:23Yeah, I see.
03:24And is that all returning customers from customers?
03:26Yeah.
03:27So we bought, when we bought the name from the liquidators, we also inherited a lot of other Garbo's assets and new data.
03:33So we've managed to target the original database.
03:37But we've obviously won every company.
03:39Yeah.
03:40But it's certainly been well received by those.
03:42Really well received.
03:43Really well received.
03:44We just get inundated with part-star reviews and testimonials and all that from people.
03:48Okay.
03:49Yeah.
03:50It's been a really good show.
03:51A lot of people really appreciate it to see Garbo's back.
03:53Yeah.
03:54It's just, not just for the size, it's been a staple in people's lives for a long time.
03:59I've got people who have been doing their hair since they were eight years old.
04:02Yeah, yeah.
04:03And I'm now doing their hair here in that same environment.
04:05It's just amazing to be a part of the fabric of how I'm growing it.
04:10And now that it is yours, what kind of, what differences do you mean to be from before?
04:14And what kind of your aims going forward?
04:16We've got a lot of big dreams for the family.
04:18They've left us all to be in a bigger shot over a long time.
04:22We would like to start an academy, which is something Garbo's dabbled in in the past, training young people.
04:27And I was training young people at the Garbo's just before the post-act.
04:32So we want to kind of bring that back and drum up that sort of support for the young people as well.
04:37The UK dressing on the map, it was kind of big dreams there.
04:40And then we used to do all our own photography work and stuff like that at the old salon.
04:44So we're trying to bring them back forward.
04:45But we want to be stylist-focused and client-focused.
04:49And create a nice environment for everybody to enjoy.
04:51Everyone get a professional experience with stylists and clients.
04:55What I've learned is that it's not easy to find out.
04:58Yeah.
04:59We're going to be operating on a little bit of a different system than we did before at the old Garbo.
05:05But just for everybody's benefit.
05:07It's about rebuilding the home, you know.
05:10Yeah.
05:11And everyone back for a few months of service.
05:13Yeah.
05:14Very disorientating in the last year for a lot of us, I think.
05:17Yeah.
05:18Okay, awesome.
05:19Yeah.
05:20So you've got a dish opening coming up?
05:21A dish opening, yeah.
05:22On the week of the 14th, we'll be doing a dish opening.
05:25We'll be looking for people to hop in.
05:27We'll be giving out some little goodie bags.
05:29We'd like to do consultations and skin tests for people.
