MEET YOUR MERCHANT: High Desert Hair owners try to make experience fun

Linda Beaty and Shannon Olsen met about six years ago while cutting hair at a Carson City salon.

Today, they're still styling hair together, but now they own their salon, High Desert Hair, which opened Dec. 1.

"(Linda) was the one who said we have to get out of here, we're making this guy too much money," Olsen said of their former employer. "We need to go and work for ourselves."

Beaty said she enjoys talking to her clients and watching them grow over the years.

"We're watching kids grow up," Beaty said. "We're watching kids go away to college. We're watching them come back with their own kids.

"Once you've been cutting someone's hair for five, six, seven years you do that with them," she said.

They said it took about five months to set up their business in a former gym.

Before that, it housed the shop of long-time Carson City barber Eddie Cipriani, whose family is still in the barbering business.

Beaty said their husbands helped remodel the interior of the building.

"We started from the floor up," Olsen said. "It was a gym directly before us so all these rubber floor mats were glued to the floor."

Not everything has been easy for the nascent Carson City business. Olsen said the economy has left many clients without work, which means more of them are waiting longer to go in for haircuts.

"If you have a huge percentage of your clientele doing that then you really feel it," Olsen said. "So that's a challenge."

Despite the costs of opening their own salon, both said they have not raised their prices to stay competitive.

But given the conversations and light-hearted atmosphere, Beaty said the work is worth it.

"We want it to be fun and lively," Beaty said. "The way it should be."