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.”
