Award for Senior Stylist Lucie

Stylist Lucie Ainge at the K2 Salon in Shrewsbury’s Darwin Centre.

A talented hair stylist has picked up a top award in a major competition.

Lucie Ainge, from Copthorne, Shrewsbury, took bronze in an Avant Garde Hair-styling competition run by Wolverhampton College.

The 20-year-old who works at the K2 Salon in Shrewsbury’s busy Darwin Shopping Centre, was competing against stylist from salons across the West Midlands.

Lucie, who has been with K2 for four years, started as a Saturday girl while still in school at Meole Brace Science College.

K2 was launched by former Bond Street stylist Philip Minton in December 1971 and  is officially a Vidal Sassoon support salon and over the years his staff have had access to top training with day long work experience with some of Sassoon’s top stylists.

She said: “I’ve always wanted to be a hair stylist and I really enjoyed the competition, it was a chance to be really creative.

“I enjoy cutting and colouring. It’s nice to do something different all the time.”

Lucie, who has qualified at Level Three, used friend Sophie Farrington, also 20, as a model for the competition and she added: “Avant garde is a very creative style so I did a bow at the back with her hair up.

“Sophie really liked it and she has asked me to do it like that again for a special occasion.

“K2 is a really good place to work because there is such a good atmosphere here and there is so much expertise and they are very focused on training so I would just like to carry on learning.”

K2 Stylists George & Terri threw themselves literary into fundraising and out of a plane to raise money for Breast Cancer.

Wella Regional Finalist 2012 - Terri Pritchard

above stylist Terri (aka Hayley) Pritchard with her Trend Vision Model

A Shrewsbury hair stylist is ‘Well-a’ on the way to winning a top award.
Terri Pritchard, 21, who works at both the Shrewsbury Darwin Centre’s K2 Salon as well as the company’s second outlet in Newtown, is into the regional final of the Wella Trend Vision Awards.
And the former Shrewsbury Priory School pupil is now practicing hard ahead of the glittering regional final at Manchester’s Hilton Hotel on Wednesday, May 16.
Hayley, who started her hairdressing career as a 16-year-old Saturday girl at Pride Hill’s Cameo Salon which was also owned by K2, says she is delighted to have made the final.
She said: “It’s amazing, I found the qualifying heat nerve-wracking but good fun. I had to style my model’s hair for a photo-shoot and then send the pictures in.
“Only 20 stylists make the finals so to be chosen as a finalist is an honour in itself. On the day I will have to do my model’s hair before presenting the style to the judges and talk about what I have done.”
And this isn’t the first competition Hayley has entered after she was short-listed for Young Hair Dresser of the Year at Birmingham’s NEC Arena last year.
She said: “It was an amazing experience. I want to work hard and win a few competitions before perhaps having my own salon in the future.
“However, that’s a long time off. At the present time I really enjoy working for Phillip Minton at K2. We have such fantastic regular clients at both the Newtown and Darwin Centre salons.
“My customers are more like friends than clients, you really get to know people well and what they like. To be honest I am at home styling both men’s and women’s hair and enjoy the variety.”
Hayley says she also goes under the styling name of Terri to avoid confusion with the salon’s customers.
She said: “When I first came to K2 there was already a Hayley working as a stylist so to avoid confusion I took the name Terri. I call it my stylist name but I suppose I prefer Hayley.
“The problem is many of my regular clients got used to me as Terri so I suppose I am stuck with the name now!”
And as this is the sixth consecutive year the salon has reached the Wella Trend Vision Award regional finals and K2 owner Phillip Minton, who learned his craft in London’s Bond Street in the Swinging Sixties and last year celebrated 40 years in business, says he is thrilled.
He said: “It’s a brilliant achievement and one Hayley richly deserves. She has worked incredibly hard to reach the level she has since joining us as a 16-year-old Saturday girl.
“She has always wanted to learn and work hard at her craft and she is certainly incredibly popular with our regular customers.”
Kevin Lockwood, Manager of the Darwin, Pride Hill and Riverside Centres, said: “The K2 salon is always busy and always buzzing and still as cutting edge as it was back in the day.
“It’s also been a fantastic learning ground for young stylists and is an important part of the varied offer we have here in the Darwin Centre.”

Friends ready to take the plunge for brave Kim

Terri & George are currently raising funds for a skydive in July. All donations welcome :).

Friends ready to take the plunge for brave Kim

When a brave mum’s charity skydive was scuppered by a car crash two work colleagues stepped in to take the plunge.

Kim Allman had planned to throw herself from a plane in aid of Breast Cancer Awareness but two months ago she was seriously hurt in a car accident near her home in Baschurch, near Shrewsbury.

Kim, 50, Art Director at the K2 hair and beauty salon in Shrewsbury’s busy Darwin Shopping Centre, suffered a broken ankle, hip and kneecap and severe internal bruising in the crash two months ago.

She said: “I was driving home and there’s a bad bend in the road and it happened there.

“I still ache and I’ve only just been able to start physio so I couldn’t skydive which is a shame.

“My son, Joe Goddard, has done a lot for cancer research himself and I really wanted to do something different and this was my own adventure.”

She spent several days in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and is still in pain from her injuries and isn’t able to skydive so her place is being taken by two of K2’s stylists, Hayley (Terri) Pritchard and Georgina Hughes.

Hayley, 21, said: “It was really important to Kim and when she wasn’t able to do it we decided to step in and it is such a worthy cause.

“My aunt has had breast cancer and come through it so it is important to me. Phillip Minton, the owner of K2, used to make wigs for her when she had had chemotherapy.

“Thankfully she is better now and her hair is back but that shows how vital it is to support the charity and we do a lot here for cancer charities.”

Kim has lost two friends to breast cancer and she said: “They were very good friends and one of them died 20 years ago when she was very young and the other was only last year.

“I’ve worked for Phillip Minton at K2 for 32 years now and we used to cut and style the wigs for people who had had cancer. It’s really important for their confidence to look good and I used to enjoy doing that for them.

“This was really important too and I’m just disappointed I can’t do it but so pleased that Hayley and Georgina are going to take my place.”

Hayley, from Copthorne, Shrewsbury, who works in K2’s Newtown salon, admitted: “I’m not really looking forward to it but it will be an experience and something I can say I’ve done.

“We do need to raise some money for the flight first so Georgina and I are going to be doing some charity hair-cuts at the Bull In The Barn in Shrewsbury.”

Georgina, also 21, of Castlefields, Shrewsbury, is certainly up for it: “I go skiing and up on the ski lift so I’m not bothered about heights,” she said.

“I’ve seen sky-diving on the telly and it looks really good fun and it’s something that’s got to be done so the sooner the better. I definitely want to do it.

“Cancer is an awful disease but you can survive it and by doing this we could even help change some people’s lives.”

Russell Hall, Operations Manager for Darwin, Pride Hill and Riverside Shopping Centre, said: “We hope Kim is soon fully recovered but it’s brilliant that Hayley and Georgina have taken her place and it’s brave of them too.

“It’s a fantastic charity because breast cancer is something that touches so many people’s lives and so many of the people who work here in the Shrewsbury Shopping Centres give their time and effort to raise money for cancer charities.”

Philip, Georgina, Terri & Lucie at Manchester Photoshoot

Philip, Terri, Georgina, Lucie & Models visit the Wella Studios in Manchester for a photo shoot with photographer Jim Crone.

Top salon praised for apprentice scheme

Top salon praised for apprentice scheme

A top Shropshire hair salon has been praised for its thriving apprenticeship scheme which has been running for over 40 years.

The K2 Salon in Shrewsbury’s busy Darw

in Centre has produced over 200 qualified hair stylists in that time and owner Philip Minton’s conveyor belt of talent shows no signs of running out.

K2 have been given a seal of approval by Wolverhampton College which works with the salon on their training programme for young stylists.

College lecturer Marion Towland said: “Our partnership with K2 works very well and the apprentices benefit from the programme and from the experience of working alongside high quality professionals.

“They get individual attention and K2 have their own team of assessors whom we also monitor. We have been working with them for seven years and it’s a good model of delivery and has been very successful.”

It has certainly worked well for Philip Minton, a Bond Street stylist in the London of the Swinging Sixties, who set up the business in 1971

Philip, 62, of Weston Lullingfields, who has a second salon in Newtown, reckosn he has trained over 200 stylists since then and while many salons have given up offering apprenticeships, he is still a firm believer in them.

He said: “From our point of view and most importantly from our customers’ point of view we need to know that our stylists will cut hair the way we want them to but we work with Vidal Sassoon’s artistic team to ensure the cutting is precise.

“We also have a very good partnership Wolverhampton College who come in every week – lots of people train hairdressers to pass the exams but we want them to learn to do the job and the College work that way as well.

“What is important is to get people who want to do hairdressing not just as a job but as a career because the demands are always changing as fashions and techniques change.

“I do remember the moment I wanted to be a hairdresser. I was watching TV and Vidal Sassoon came on one of these Saturday night programmes with two lovely girls on each arm and these two women just stood there and shook the beautiful bobs he had created for them.

“After I had finished my apprenticeship I went to a Bond Street company and they retrained me to do it their way. That’s what the major salons do and that’s what we do too.”

Lucy Sumner, 16, from Springfield, Shrewsbury, started her apprenticeship at K2 in September after working as a Saturday girl at the Darwin Centre salon and she said: “It’s going really well and I’ve learned so much since I’ve been here.

“Since I was young I’ve always wanted to be a hairdresser and it all just fell into place when I got a Saturday job here and they offered me an apprenticeship.”

Hannah Stead-Jones, 18, from Newtown, divides her time between the salon in her home town and the Darwin Centre and she said: “I was in sixth form and was thinking about university but that’s not a guaranteed job although it is a guaranteed debt.

“I’ve always been creative and felt I had a flair for hair and I decided to look for an apprenticeship because it’s a skill and career for life and K2 are the best.

“The course can take two years but if you want to work at it you can and I hope to be qualified this summer.

“We get one on one tuition and the support here at K2 and from the college is fantastic and the staff at K2 are really good so you learn so much from being around them.”

Kevin Lockwood, Manager of the Darwin, Pride Hill and Riverside Shopping Centres, said: “Phillip’s salon is always busy and always buzzing and still as cutting edge as it was back in the day.

“It’s a fantastic learning ground for young stylists and is an important part of the varied offer we have here in the Darwin Centre.”

Congratulations Jo

Congratulations to Jo on birth of Jasmine Alice, new addition to the team. :)