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Capricious Skin Care, Brandi Colton
Brandi grew up in Los Gatos, California with her brothers and mother.
After quitting high school, Brandi joined her Mom’s technical school at the age of 17. Barbara Maness, Brandi’s mother, who used to design computer chips, launched her own school to train youths in microchip layout design. She started teaching these kids who were right out of high school, giving them careers after a training of four to five months. They generally got good jobs after finishing the program.
Brandi completed her training successfully and joined numerous high-tech companies including Sun Microsystems. At the height of her career as a hardware manager, she had a team of 26 engineers reporting to her.
By the time she was in her 30s, she was already a highly accomplished executive. Then a personal tragedy changed her life completely. Brandi took three months off to deal with her grief. During that time, she made a serious decision: “I decided I wanted to give it all up and go to beauty school to learn and make my dream successful.”
She decided to start her own company which was something she’d always wanted to do and she took the chance.
“Everyone told me I was completely crazy to leave a successful job to open my spa and that I’d never make any money. I had never run a business before, but I finally decided that life was too short not to give it a try. And as soon as I started my classes, I absolutely fell in love with doing facials and skin care.”
She started looking for a location then in February, 2010 she took possession of the property and by March Brandi started her dream spa “Capricious Skin Care”.
“For the first few weeks I’d sit in my spa alone. The phone never rang, and we had no clients!”
She tried different marketing techniques, but nothing worked out! Finally she took a chance and contacted “Groupon”, the “deal-of-the-day” website that offers discounted coupons for a variety of goods and services in many regions of the U.S. In June Brandi convinced the Chicago-based company to post a deal of the day for facials at her spa. She was completely unprepared for what happened next!
“The day our special was posted, by midnight we’d sold over 1,200 facials. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’d better hire someone!’ ”
Since that first rush, the client base at Capricious has grown steadily. Brandi decided to go for an expansion and move into a larger quarter.
She needed help and her ex boss from Sun Microsystem suggested that she contact SCORE for some management help. “I needed help with the business side of things like bookkeeping, employees, inventory control, keeping me on track and focused, and I contacted SCORE”.
She made an appointment and met Mike O’Connor, who had experience in managing a small business. “Mike taught me to take control of the finances enabling me to make much wiser choices when it came to running special deals or funding the many new exciting ideas I had. He also enlightened me to the criticality of cash flow”.
Her future plans are expanding the skin care retail products. She has over 25 products on Amazon Prime right now and growing. They are currently in 3 local salons that are retailing her products. The next step is private labeling to other salons all over the country (they sell her products with their name on them). She wishes to get regular help from SCORE. Recently Groupon recognized Brandi Colton’s Capricious Skin Care as one of the “150 best companies” in the nation.
”I will continue to work with Mike from SCORE to keep my feet on the ground and making sound decisions as I grow this new business. Thank you to Mike and SCORE”!
We from Silicon Valley SCORE wish her all the best and success.
Capricious Skin Care is located at 15466 Los Gatos Blvd., Suite 209, and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9 am to 5pm. A full list of services and other information is available at www.capriciousspa.com, or by calling 408.356.3355.
Brandi Colton is the owner of Capricious Skin Care located in Los Gatos California. Prior to that Brandi worked in the high tech industry for 26 years, many of those years as a hardware manager. She is now living her dream and loving life as the owner of her own Day Spa.
