House of Lange: a Salon for All
Nic Lange, co-owner and lead stylist of House of Lange. Photo credit Chris Bagot.
Some artists discover their medium at a young age. For Nic Lange, co-owner and lead stylist for House of Lange, it was his mother’s prematurely gray hair that sparked his passion for coloring hair.
“My mother was a single parent in New York in the early nineties,” says Nic. “She grew gray at a young age and looked much older than what she was. It was a bit of a struggle looking for work. And I really wanted her to get her hair colored. Of course she couldn’t afford it. And I asked her, ‘Well, what if I do it for you?’ And I actually went into a local beauty supplier. At that time you didn't have to have a license to get color from them. I just asked a couple of questions to the person who worked there and pretty much formulated for my mother's color. And I was about 12 years old. The reaction that she got afterwards was amazing. She felt younger. She felt better about herself. I felt like this is a gift you can do for someone to physically change them without plastic surgery or anything major, just by changing the hair color.”
Nic’s passion for coloring hair only grew with time. It ultimately blossomed into a career with hair stylist Kevin Murphy, eponymous owner of the hair product empire KEVIN.MURPHY.
“It was something that I was really attracted to,” says Nic. “I decided to go to the academy and get proper training on what I was doing with coloring, cutting, styling. My family went from seeing it as a hobby to seeing that this is an actual career for me. For eight years, I was working with KEVIN.MURPHY. Aside from doing hair behind the chair I was an educator for them. I started with the styling range, and then they decided to launch their color line. I was brought in to work full time with the brand and help launch the color line throughout the US and Canada. And it was such a whole new learning experience for me from the industry. I was a training and developing manager. So I was focused on creating education curriculum, helping expand the color range, and creating rules and regulations that are still there.”
Initially, Nic had no intention of opening his own salon, or moving from his home base in New York.
“If you would have asked me if I ever wanted to open a salon, I would have said no,” says Nic. “I was happy with what I was doing with KEVIN.MURPHY. I enjoyed that. I got to travel around the world. There was a lot of time away from home, but each experience helped build me as a person. My husband [Gary Lange, co-owner of House of Lange] and I have been together for about 15 years. We wanted to leave the East Coast. The weather and the climate change that was happening was just out of control. Within two years, we had two hurricanes, endless blizzards and an earthquake. And I said, ‘Okay, that's enough. We’re literally getting everything. I'd rather go to California and deal with the state that constantly moves than dealing with this.’”
Photo credit Chris Bagot.
Nic’s husband, who works with a military contractor to make industrial grade parachutes, applied for a promotion that took the couple to Orange County. Conveniently, KEVIN.MURPHY’s headquarters are based in California as well. As Nic traveled the world to educate stylists on KEVIN.MURPHY products, he learned about what differentiates good salons from exceptional ones.
“I would come from a lot of my trips and tell my husband of things that I was seeing in the field,” says Nic. “The things that salons were doing that were phenomenal, or could have done better. Or things that salons were doing that weren’t so great but if they would have switched things up, could have turned into a good one. So I got to see a lot of what's working and what's not working.”
It was the exposure to salons around the world that prepared Nic to open a salon of his own.
“After seeing all that, my husband said, ‘Well, why don't you just open one here?,’” says Nic. “And why I wanted to open a salon in Southern California, in general, was there is no major culture in salons today in this area. Coming from the East Coast, a lot of ours are salary based salons, and we are a community. So my guests would go to somebody else on the team, and they would know them by name, would know their history. We talked to them. It was a community almost like Cheers, where you will go to the bar and people know who you are. So when I first moved to California, I felt that that wasn’t the case. A lot has to do, culturally, with rental stations.”
The culture of salons, Nic explains, can be shaped by the nature of the establishment’s arrangement with its stylists.
“What happens is you rent a station from the owner of the salon, and unless the owner is really strong on who they allow to rent in their space, a lot of the time that culture is not there,” explains Nic. “Each hairdresser is obviously their own business owner with their own rules, with their own products, and with all of that there’s no consistency. What is the experience of the client when they walk in? What is the hairdresser going through? We are social by nature, so when you become your own little island, you don't have that back and forth.”
Photo credit Chris Bagot
The Langes launched their salon with a set of core beliefs to guide their management. Chief among these was the experience.
“When my husband and I decided to open the salon,” says Nic, “we knew it's not just a salon. It’s a brand. It's a culture. And it’s about taking care of our team and taking care of our guests. It’s one of the oldest ways of doing business, but we seem to forget that. So when we were looking for places in Orange County, I really wanted it to be an environment that is welcoming for everyone. And salons are actually sometimes a very intimidating place for a couple of reasons. One, it could be a self-confidence issue when the person is walking in. It could be because they might have some sort of illness that has caused them to have hair loss or have health conditions. Or it could be a person who is transgender, and they don't feel comfortable coming in because they have to choose between a men's haircut or a woman's hair cut.”
One key aspect to providing an exceptional experience for all guests is the option for privacy.
“A lot of women who wear hijabs can’t have their hair shown in front of a man that is not in their direct household,” says Nic. “Usually when they are looking for a salon to get their hair done, they either end up having to go in a back room. That seems degrading. Or they have to wait until someone closes their doors or before they open the doors to get any hair services. We wanted to create an environment that regardless of what gender, political view, religious view, whatever the case may be, it doesn't really matter. Once you walk in here, you’re a person and you get treated as such. So we've created that private room for any guest that feels uncomfortable.”
The option for a private suite at House of Lange, in addition to the many amenities and overall welcoming atmosphere, made the salon a hit. Having Irvine Spectrum as its home base contributed to the communal vibe.
“Irvine Spectrum as a whole creates a downtown effect,” says Nic. “Growing up in Queens, New York, it's a melting pot. Irvine, to me, seems that way where you could have one of the richest people around you to one of the most hardworking people that lives paycheck to paycheck. To a person who is French to a person who's from Ghana. There's a variation of culture in Irvine that I think makes it very unique and very special. Also age groups. It's not only young people. It's anywhere from young families to middle aged people to any age group. So to me Irvine in general brings that great variation and clientele we want to serve. We are a small business and we wanted to make sure that we have that ability of feeling like a downtown. People walking by our guests, people watching us getting hair done, creates that very urban kind of city living that sometimes is difficult to find in Southern California, but especially in Orange County.”
Just as House of Lange was emerging as a bright newcomer in Orange County, salons were forced to shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19. Although House of Lange was able to get some support during the shutdown, most aid eluded the business because it was relatively new.
Photo credit Chris Bagot
“It’s been really tough, not just in our industry, but any industry that's being forced to shut down because there's really very little help,” says Nic. “So, for example, the help that we received was more federal aid, like the PPP loan and the disaster loan. We also had to take out loans on top of that from our lender to keep us afloat. And there's not a lot of resources, to be quite honest. There are very few things that they have out there for new businesses. And what I mean by that is, for example, we need to show what we did in the second quarter of last year. But we opened in the third quarter, right? So automatically by default we don't qualify for that type of help. Or they want your license to be marked as of June 1st. But then our license was marked as of June 16th. Because it wasn’t by the first, we haven’t qualified for that either. So it's very hard.”
One of the most important allies to House of Lange’s survival has been Irvine Spectrum.
“What we end up depending on is working together with our landlord,” says Nic. “Irvine Spectrum has really helped us. We work closely together, and that's where we get a lot of support. At the end of the day, the relationships with your lender or your landlord and the community is what will actually get you through this.”
It is primarily the community created by House of Lange that has been its saving grace.
“We were able to sustain our clientele base and add to it,” explains Nic, who sells products, hair care kits, and color kits in the salon during the shut down. “What actually has helped us hasn't been so much the city or the state. It has been our loyal guests that we've somehow been able to achieve within eighteen months. Of those eighteen months, about seven months we’ve been shut down. So I feel like that's the way moving forward for businesses like mine. The only way they will get support. It's not gonna be so much governmental aid. It's gonna be the community.”
Photo credit House of Lange
As an advocate for small businesses, Nic urges Irvinites to consider how they allocate their spending to keep our local establishments afloat.
“The community needs to be really aware of the reality we are going through,” says Nic. “When you are making those choices of, you know, do I want to always focus on a big brand or big corporation and put all my dollars to that? Or do I want to spread that into those small businesses? And be considerate to those businesses as well, because even though we reopened, we have never been able to reopen the same way as we did.”
As House of Lange hunkers down for the latest stay-at-home order, Nic is maintaining the relationship with his community.
“We're still keeping the front of the salon open for retail,” says Nic. “So I'm here Wednesday through Sunday. We offer color kits and treatment kits that clients can do themselves at home. It's a good way to have that human interaction without having the human in front of you.”
Find out more about Nic Lange’s winter hair care tips and his one can’t-live-without product.
Visit House of Lange at Irvine Spectrum, open Wednesday-Sunday from 11-6, for color kits (root touch ups, all-over color, and toners) as well as deep conditioning treatment kits. Shipping and curbside pickup are available.
House of Lange
719 Spectrum Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
949-753-1223