Our story
The salon i wanted didn’t exist
I was a professional woman in my thirties. I wanted somewhere I could go to get excellent treatments in a space that didn’t make me feel judged, where the people doing my brows or my nails felt more like friends than strangers. Somewhere I could have a proper chat, a great cuppa, and leave feeling really taken care of.
Sounds simple. It really wasn’t.
I’d worked in beauty my whole career, so I knew what was out there. There were spas, there were high-street salons, there were nail bars — all of them with their place, none of them quite right for me. I just couldn’t find the version I was looking for.
So at some point the question stopped being “where can I find this?” and started being “why can’t i build the salon I want to go to instead?”
“I couldn’t find it. So I made it.”
Building it
So, I started building it
I’d always wanted to run my own business. I had the experience, I had the standards, and I knew what great felt like.
I knew straightaway that I wanted specialists. A team where everyone was as good as everyone else, so it didn’t matter who you saw. And I knew I didn’t want to try and do every treatment in the beauty space as you end up with too much stock, too much equipment, and a team that’s great at one thing and a bit average at the rest.
I’d rather we did only a few treatments, and did them brilliantly.
Mostly though, I knew what I wanted the place to feel like.
The heart of the story
Which brings me to my Nan
Nan’s my favourite human on the planet. Small and mighty. The head honcho of our family, the one everyone goes to, the one who keeps it all moving.
She’s also one of life’s grafters, and she passed that down to all of us. The fast, thorough, head-down, no-drama bit of me is all her. So when people ask where the Mooeys standards come from, the honest answer is Nan.
Anyway. The name.
She used to call a woman’s hairy upper lip a “Mooey” which is short for moustache. The first version of the business was going to be waxing only, and the plan was always to throw in a free Mooey wax with every intimate wax. Value-added offer, see what I did there. So, the original name was Muffs and Mooeys.
Hilarious on paper. Less so on a high-street signboard.
I dropped the Muffs, kept the Mooeys, and the name just stuck. I love how playful it is. And it ties the whole thing back to her.
The whole look and feel of the salons is country chic, comfortable and friendly. Think of it like going to a friend’s for a catch up!
It all comes from sitting in my Nan’s house and putting the world to rights over a cuppa. It’s one of my favourite ways to spend my time. That’s the feeling I wanted Mooeys to give to its comMOOnity.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather go to for my beauty treats. That’s the feeling I wanted Mooeys to give people.”
2013
The first salon
The first Mooeys opened in Farnham in 2013.
I’d gone from wearing suits and heels and leading huge teams to wearing a pinny and trainers and doing treatments I hadn’t properly done in years. I remember sitting there those first few weeks, waiting for clients, quietly thinking I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
But people came. Slowly at first, then less slowly. By month six I had regulars and rebookings, and it started to feel like it all might actually work out.
The hard lesson
The second salon nearly broke me.
I opened Horsham not that long after opening Farnham, and I made a properly stupid mistake. I hadn’t added the two salon budgets together!
A £10k cashflow gap opened up that I hadn’t seen coming. For a bit there I genuinely thought I might lose the lot.
I didn’t lose it. But it was tight. The kind of mistake you only need to make once, and I haven’t made it since. Every Mooeys that’s opened in the years since has been built on top of that lesson.
“The kind of mistake you only need to make once.”
Now & next
Seven Mooeys. And counting
The original ten-salon goal has turned into fifty by 2030. A mix of company-owned salons, franchised salons, and concession partnerships in the right places. We’ve created our own professional wax range, bodycare products called MOOSKIN, training programmes for beauty pros and even launched our Moo Chats Podcast.
But honestly? The bit I care about most is the feel of the place.
I want Mooeys to be the salon people choose. A name they trust and recommend. A brand they love. And I want every single Mooeys to feel like an independent salon when you walk through the door, even when there are fifty of them.
Like somewhere local. Like somewhere that knows you.
That’s the bit that matters most.
