- January 06, 2015
- By Alex Stoller
Salon owner Vanessa Strunk ’99 isn’t up for an award at this weekend’s Golden Globes ceremony, but she already feels like a winner.
A sampling of her line of natural beauty products will be included in the “swag bag” of freebies handed out to nominees such as Jennifer Aniston and “Orange Is the New Black’s” Taylor Schilling at the annual Awards Style Lounge in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Strunk and her team will be giving award nominees and presenters a wearable treatment, a shampoo, a serum and a lip balm at the invitation-only Friday event organized by Secret Room Events. Other presenters, as large as Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret, will be sharing high-end jewelry, jeans, skin care products and vacations.
Rita Branch of Secret Room Events says a big reason why she chose Strunk is because celebrities love natural products. Strunk didn’t want to miss the opportunity to expand her clientele to celebrities with so much visibility.
“I don’t think I am going to become rich and famous and sell a million products, but I think in today’s environment this is how you get seen and get recognized,” says Strunk, who sells her products online, in her Rockville, Md., salon and in Roots Market in Olney, Md.
Every product Strunk gifts will be money taken from her pocket, but donations are nothing new to the entrepreneur who donates her products to events at local schools, women’s organizations and animal sanctuaries.
Strunk has always loved hair. While working toward her degree in health education at the University of Maryland she ran her own hair salon, Chameleon Hair Designs. She found that most of the products there made hair look good, but they weren’t good for it.
She hired a chemist in 2012 and worked with him to take out any harmful ingredients from a formula for shampoo. In July 2013, Strunk’s line hit the market.
“There are some people that wash their hair with aloe and lavender oil, and there are other people who don’t care if something’s good for their hair,” Strunk says. “They just want their hair to look good. My market is really in the middle.”
She also started her own interior design company, Green Diva Designs, after friends loved the renovation she put on her own home. She made it official when she got her contractor’s license, and she has designed residential homes for the past eight years. The business incorporates sustainable business practices, just like Body & Soul does.
“A lot of people say it doesn’t make sense, you’re a hair dresser and a builder,” she says. “But if you’re an entrepreneur it does make sense, because you put your personal philosophy in whatever it is what you do.”