GUILDERLAND — When stylists Erika Bates and Rebecca Riggi signed their lease for a space in Guilderland Center earlier this year, it was the culmination of a years-long desire to own their salon. But then the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. 

Governments responded by shutting down non-essential services to keep the public safe, delaying the women’s dream until last week, when they were allowed to open Ink & Ivy House of Beauty as part of Albany County’s second phase of a four-phase recovery. 

Business since then, Riggi told The Enterprise, has been booming. 

“We’ve been booked solid since the day we opened our doors and it doesn’t look like things will be slowing down any time soon,” Riggi said. 

Riggi is a licensed aesthetician who has been practicing for 12 years. She met Bates, a cosmetologist of 14 years, while the two were working at a small salon in Altamont, where they started harboring dreams of opening their own business.

“We always just knew that we had a want, drive, and desire to own our own business someday,” Riggi said, “At the end of 2019, the opportunity sort of presented itself and we got that ball rolling. We signed a lease … earlier this year and then COVID hit, so we continued with our plans in the midst of the shutdown and we were really grateful and blessed to be able to open our doors last week with our hair services.” 

As an aesthetician, Riggi provides skincare and waxings, which are services still prohibited in Phase 2 but allowed in Phase 3, which is expected to begin on June 17 in the Capital Region. So while Bates and the other stylists cut hair, Riggi works the reception desk, she said, and keeps stations cleaned and stocked, which she’ll continue to do until next week, when — if things go according to plan — she’ll be able to accept clients herself. 

Besides that, Riggi said, they are hardly impeded by the regulations in place, which call for social distancing and increased standards of hygiene.

“All our five stations are already feet apart,” Riggi said, “so the regulations are easy to follow. And we’re not double-booking — we’re only taking one client at a time.” 

They have an easier time, certainly, than salons in shopping malls, which are still largely shut down. For a store in a mall to reopen, it must have its own external entrance — real estate that’s typically secured by restaurants and big-box stores. 

Bates, who knows two stylists who work in mall salons, offered them booths at Ink & Ivy until they’re able to go back to their “home salon,” Riggi said, and there’s one more booth available for anyone looking to service clients. 

Marching back to normal

While the pandemic has been immediately and profoundly devastating for many people, some experienced the past three months — with still time to go — as a death by a thousand cuts. 

Though perhaps not unemployed, or at risk of losing their life to the disease, these people acclimated to a world where leaving the house became a fraught experience and many familiar comforts — movies, favorite restaurants, friends — fell away, unless accessible from behind a mask or a screen. 

Salons, Riggi said, are often an important part of a life that feels “normal,” and especially so during this pandemic, during which Riggi has been concerned about the climbing rates of depression and domestic violence. 

She jokingly referred to it as “hair-apy,” but the concept of a space where people can go to feel safe, expressive, and pampered is a serious one, which, Riggi suggested, is why the two stylists retained around 400 clients from their previous location. 

“You form bonds with clients and they become your friends,” Riggi said, “and the next thing you know, you’re going through their life’s trials and tribulations with them … When people find a stylist or a technician that they love and want to follow, people will really go anywhere for that bond and that relationship.” 

Riggi said that an hour-long hair or skin service is a time where a client can “talk about whatever’s on their mind in a serene environment.” 

“One of the hardest parts for us, because we were shut down,” Riggi said, “was not being able to see our customers, and not being able to help people the way we help people. That’s why we love our jobs so much. It’s the public relations, it’s the caring that comes back and forth, and it’s the nurturing that we’re able to provide for people.” 

“What we do for a living is just as much therapy for us as it is for our clients,” Riggi said.