Okay… this one is BIG.
Elluca is officially a 2026 ANZ AHIA NSW/ACT Salon Business of the Year finalist.
For the second year in a row!!! 🧡
And I really need to sit with that one for a minute.
Elluca hasn't even been open for five years. We opened in January 2022 with me, four chairs, two basins and a pretty massive vision for what I thought a salon could be. Once I have an idea, there’s not much straying me from that.
Now we're being recognised for the second consecutive year alongside incredible salons from across NSW and the ACT, many of which have been operating for decades.
That's an achievement I'm allowing myself to be proud of.
Because none of this happened overnight. People see the busy salon now. The team. The growth. The awards. The social media. The beautiful space.
What they don't always see are the years of work behind it. The behind the scenes kinda stuff.
The Behind The Scenes
- The late nights. The numbers. The mistakes.
- The uncomfortable decisions. The constant reinvesting.
- The team training. The systems that didn't work.
- The difficult conversations.
- The times I've questioned what the hell I was doing, then got up the next day and kept going.
I have absolutely wanted to burn it all to the ground, but logically that isn’t very smart is it? I make a lot of my decisions through removing emotion, numbers and strategy.
In less than five years, we've grown from one person to a full team, doubled our stations from four to eight, doubled our basins, built an education program, developed an incredible team culture and created a salon that genuinely feels like us.
The Numbers
~2x
Service Sales Growth (2025)
855
New Clients (Award Period)
Client Retention > 80%
First 6 months of 2026 already surpassed entirety of 2025.
I'm sharing those numbers because I'm proud of them. If you’re in this line of business, you get it. But I'm also sharing them because businesses don't just magically grow.
And one of the biggest things I can credit for our growth?
Business Coaching.
I will bang on about this forever.
Every business owner needs a coach.
Seriously. It can get lonely out there, who is challenging you? Who is questioning your decisions? Who are you bouncing ideas off? Who is looking from the outside in?
We happily invest thousands into learning how to balayage better, cut better, formulate better and become better hairdressers. But then we open a business and somehow expect ourselves to automatically know how to lead people, understand finances, create systems, manage growth, have difficult conversations, market ourselves and make strategic decisions.
I certainly didn't know all of that. It’s a completely different hat to wear, I had to learn it.
It challenged me to stop thinking only like a hairdresser who owned a salon and actually start thinking like a business owner. And sometimes that meant realising I was the thing that needed to change. If there is a problem, I am generally the solution and the problem!
Better leadership. Better systems. Better boundaries. Better financial understanding. Better communication. Better decisions.
That investment in coaching flows into the entire team too, with mentoring, retreats, education, weekly one-on-ones, development plans, monthly meetings and quarterly planning days now built into the way Elluca operates.
I genuinely don't think Elluca would be where it is today without it. And we're nowhere near finished. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about.
We're not even five years old. To be a finalist once was incredible. To do it two years in a row, while standing alongside established salons that have been doing this for decades, makes me realise just how much we've managed to build in such a short amount of time.
Not because we got lucky. Because we worked bloody hard. I worked hard, my team committed to working hard and the dream is alive.
- We invested in our people.
- We invested in education.
- We invested in coaching.
- We invested back into the salon.
- We listened to our clients.
- We changed things when they weren't working. And we kept showing up.
This nomination isn't just about having a beautiful salon or doing great hair. NSW/ACT Salon Business of the Year looks at the whole business: facilities, environment, customer care, services, financial growth, and training.
And that's what makes this one feel so special. It's recognition of Elluca as a whole.
The Business.
The Team.
The Clients.
The Culture.
And almost five years of absolute blood, sweat and tears that have gone into building it. And we have definitely renovated it a few times as well.
Whatever happens on awards night, being here for the second year running is something I'll never take for granted. Five years ago, Elluca was an idea in my head. I had a very strict criteria that I almost talked myself out of, simply because I didn’t know how to make it happen. But I did.
Now we're standing alongside some of the best salons in NSW and the ACT.
That's pretty cool if you ask me!
Jean x 🧡
