Since its inception, Aveda’s company mission has been to care for the world, from the products it makes to how it gives back to society.

Source: @jconsalon

Any stylist who has ever worked for an Aveda salon can attest to feeling part of something bigger, knowing they are doing good in the world and working with like-minded people.

But sometimes, life happens, and for one reason or another a stylist goes down another path, exploring work in a different type of salon environment for a period of time.

Here, two Aveda veterans share their experiences of leaving and coming back to Aveda.

Prioritizing Relationships

Toni Jennings got her start as a stylist at William Edge Salon, an Aveda salon in New Braunfels, Texas.

Toni Jennings 
Source: hairhouseatx.com

“I loved Aveda, and only wanted to work in Aveda salons after my experience there,” Jennings says.

But in the mid 2000s, she moved to Austin, and at the time, there were no Aveda salons hiring. She worked in a Davines-based salon, and started dating fellow stylist Tyler Cochran, who also had an Aveda background, and was an Aveda Institute graduate.

The two eventually married, and in 2020, opened Hair House in Austin, carrying several lines, including Davines. But they both still thought about Aveda and what it meant to them. In the summer of 2022, they attended a Neill education retreat, which evoked more thought about their salon’s future.

Source: hairhouseatx.com

“Then in 2023, we started phasing out a couple product lines and an Aveda rep from Neill stopped by to talk to us,” Jennings says. “In mid-2023, we made the decision to sign on with Aveda and we’ve been with them ever since.”

With many factors weighing in on their decision to go back to Aveda, Jennings says the support from Aveda and Neill ranked highest.

“I was feeling unsupported before, and Aveda and Neill are invested in developing personal relationships with us,” she says.

“They want to help us grow our business,” she says.

Jennings acknowledges she and Cochran are leading a team of artists, who aren’t historically known for their love of numbers.

“But when they have templates they can follow, it makes their goals more tangible and helps them understand what they need to do every day to make money.”

The proof is in the retail. So far, in 2024, retail is up 9 percent, and 32 percent of products sold were Aveda.

“You don’t really need a sales pitch—I guarantee someone who sits in my chair has used that Aveda product at least once before.”

The Aveda name speaks for itself, she says. “Clients come in because we are Aveda. It’s a niche network that has been around forever and people are passionate about it.”

Jennings says she and Cochran feel just as passionate about taking advantage of all the education Aveda and Neill have to offer, including Serious Business, Neill Quality College, bringing Aveda educators in house, running a competition to go to an Aveda editorial shoot, and product education online and in salon.

“We’ve started to experiment with Aveda color, too,” she says. “We’re excited to see what the future holds.”

An Unexpected Pivot

Tina Jodrey started her career in the Aveda network in 1989, working at a high-end salon in Cincinnati, Ohio. There, she met Julie and Frederic Holzberger and worked for their distributorship, educating out in the field before opening her own Aveda salon.

Tina Jodrey

Life evolved, and Jodrey sold her salon and moved to Florida to pursue Aveda education, working in all levels of the program at The Salon People.

Passionate about education, Jodrey’s next career move was teaching in Neill’s schools. Then, life threw her a curveball.

“I developed an extreme allergic reaction to an ingredient in Aveda color,” she says. “It mostly came out through contact dermatitis, with hair color being the main culprit.”

Before Aveda reformulated their color in 2010, Jodrey had never had a problem. But something about the new formula triggered the allergy.

“As an educator in schools, I had my hands in hair way more than I did behind the chair,” she says.

With this in mind, Jodrey pivoted back to the salon, but continued to have an extreme allergic reaction.

Unwilling to leave the salon industry, she accepted a job as a regional educator in upper management at Ulta, still doing hair, but not as often.

“Then one day, my hands just broke out again from ingredients in hair color, and the doctor said I wouldn’t be able to do hair anymore,” she says. “That didn’t work for me. I went to beauty school when I was 16, it was what I did my whole life.”

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and Jodrey found her new path.

“I decided to work with Simply Organic Beauty, a distributor of OWAY and O&M, products I had used without any issues,” she says. “I had my own loft called Votre Organic Way salon, where I used these two lines exclusively without any allergic reactions.”

While successful, Jodrey left her work behind the chair when Simply Organic approached her during the pandemic with an offer she couldn’t refuse: director of sales.

“I ran a group of sales people who serviced more than 10k customers,” she says. “And then I was promoted to a director role where I worked directly with vendors, including IN (Intelligent Nutrients).”

Working with IN reignited Jodrey’s interest in Aveda and the special connection it has to its salon network.

“A lot of companies are missing the boots-on-the-ground sales reps,” she says. “Those are the people who connect the world of Aveda to its stylists so they are all part of one big community.”

That community is how Jodrey found her way back into Aveda education.

“Tom Petrillo of The Salon People reached out to me about an opportunity at J. Con Salon and Spa in St. Petersburg this year,” she says. “Aveda had reformulated their color again around 2020, so I decided to give it another shot.”

Fortunately, she had no reaction to the ingredients in the newly formulated Aveda color and was able to accept the position as Coach and Development Director at J. Con, where she has been the past several months.

“Aveda has a product system to support every type of hair and a salon system to support everything a stylist does, from prebooking to consultation—there’s an entire service wheel.”

Jodrey says Aveda also builds guest engagement like no other company she worked with.

“Being with Aveda feels like being in a club,” she says. “I’m with like minded people where I foster relationships with guests and an education team, and am supported by co-workers. I like being part of something bigger and working with people who know what a luxury experience is.”

Source: @jconsalon

She adds, “Aveda offers that and gives the knowledge on how to execute. People from Aveda salons understand all the value-added experiences and all the things that set you apart from being an everyday stylist.”

During her years away from Aveda, Jodrey says she witnessed a lot of businesses being run with no rhyme or reason and nothing to support the owner.

“Aveda will give you a great business model that you can customize to what works for you and your salon and you can expand on it,” she says. “And Aveda’s environmental mission resonates. People look up ingredients—they’re very inquisitive about what they’re putting in their body and hair.

“You know you’re going to get a high-quality, consistent service at an Aveda salon with personalized attention.”