Tabatha Coffey: Taking Over For Good

by lance perkins

 

"I actually begged my father to buy it for me, and it was incredibly expensive," admitted, Coffey. "I obviously couldn’t read it because it was all in French. I just poured over it and over it, I would sleep with it and just look at the pictures of the models and the hair and the makeup and the clothes and I was always into it. Although I love fashion, I never had that gravitation toward thinking I could sew or be able to do that. Hair was just always the thing that I wanted to do.”  

 

One doesn’t make it in this competitive line of work without telling it like it is—and Tabatha has absolutely no trouble getting her point across. Some could argue that the industry itself brings out unveiled truth in an artist, but it looks as though her outspokenness was passed down to her by someone much closer to home. Literally.

 

“Oh, totally my mother…my mother and my eldest brother," confirmed Coffey. "My father left when I was really young, so I was raised pretty much by my mother. And she was incredibly supportive of me. She actually was a hairdresser when she was a young woman and she was incredibly supportive of me doing whatever made me happy and what I wanted to do.”

 

Coffey’ has been called a lot of names on her reality series on Bravo, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. She elaborates, “I’ve certainly been called a lot of names, mostly a bitch. I mean, everyone can be a bitch at times, but I don’t think I’m a bitch. I think I am very blunt and I’m very honest and I do tell the truth—especially when it comes to the show. I’m there to help these people. I legitimately want to help them and I don’t have a lot of time to do it, so I need to be honest with them to try and get to the bottom of the problem.

 

So, if I was a guy, people would say, ‘Oh, he’s so successful and he’s dynamic and he’s powerful or he’s a go-getter.’ But because I’m a woman, the only label that people really know to call a successful, honest woman is ‘bitch,’ and that is a shame. And it’s a compliment in a way because it means I’m obviously doing my job, that I’m telling the truth and that I am successful. I mean, there’s definitely tough love, and I get that—but it is also a situation where, as I said, I don’t have a lot of time to pussyfoot around and hold their hands during the process. I need to address the situations and sometimes the way other people approach me can be kind of rude as well. And I get really passionate about what I do, so I guess that’s why people call me that.”  

 

Sticks and stones aside, every motivator has at least once gotten to a point where faith was lost, communication broke down and the person in question just couldn’t be helped. Coffey said, “I honestly try to never get to that, because there is always something that I try to find to motivate me. You know, in season one there were owners who totally drove me crazy, and I had a really hard time interacting with them.

 

But, the things that kept me going and kept me motivated were their staff, I wanted the staff to have a better working environment. So, you know, even though people push my buttons, and sometimes I feel that maybe the owners or stylists are not listening to me, I’m not a quitter. I am going to try and forge ahead and help the people who are going to get something out of the experience of me being there.”

 

Even the most dedicated individuals have the occasional meltdown, so we asked Tabatha how she keeps from blowing up. “Oh, shit! You know, that’s really hard," Tabatha explained. "Look, I sometimes walk out of those salons when I’ve had a really rough day and I just feel like I’ve been in a boxing ring for hours. But there’s a professionalism that I need to keep. You will see in this season that I walk out and I will walk away to stop myself from blowing up. I would rather walk out and kind of compose myself and later try to get through to the person than blow up and lose it, because it’s not going to be helpful to them in the long run…and it will get really ugly.”

 

When it comes to perfectionism, Tabatha is nearly unmatched. But she is very aware that mishaps can happen to anyone at work. She explains, “Everyone’s human and we all make mistakes, but if something doesn’t work out the way I want it to work out, I’m open enough to say to a client, ‘Look, this isn’t working out.’ Sometimes with hair color, you can’t predict how it’s going to do when you’re doing corrective work. But I’m always really honest with clients and say, "We need to do it again."

 

One of the funniest things—I just had this client in this week. She’s been a client of mine for a really long time. She is incredibly pregnant and she’s tiny, but she’s huge with her daughter, just huge! She always changes her hair and she told me to cut it all off. And you know what? I should have known better, I really should have known better, because she was really pregnant and hormonal and she was way too heavy with child and I listened to her. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And she was like, ‘Yes! Yes! I’m sure! Cut it off. It’s driving me crazy!’ And I did…and it was just horrible. I mean, the haircut wasn’t horrible; just the overall result was horrible. She was just too hormonal and too emotional, and that was a good learning lesson.”

 

Tabatha has also seen a lot of unappetizing things in salons, and shared with us one of worst. “Okay. Dirt is always really gross to me. When salons are just ridiculously filthy, then it’s disgusting to me. In one of the Florida salons I found a really personal item in the guy’s drawer that just had no business being in public—and it certainly had no business in a hairdressing salon. One of the guys had a ten-inch, I guess, dildo in his drawer that he called ‘the bitch tamer’ and, uh…I found that a little offensive.”

 

Business owners will do peculiar things in order to survive this slump, but Tabatha has some more coventional tips on boosting salon sales in this tough economy.

"One of the biggest things is that you need to make sure that you have really good customer service," advised Coffey. "People are paying for a service. I don’t care how much they’re paying; they really need to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. And there are little things that you can do—it doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul to your business to make it look brighter. Throw on a fresh coat of paint and change the colors slightly.

 

Sometimes just cleaning and re-arranging the place can make it look different and fresh for a client. And the changes don’t need to be huge to make a difference and make clients feel fresh and rejuvenated. Feel fresh and rejuvenated in your business. If you don’t have them already, add fresh flowers. Really clean the place up so it’s sparkling—maybe change the retail around so that it looks a little bit different. There are a lot of really small things you can do, just like you do to your home without spending a lot of money—things that make clients feel good when they walk in.”