By Anna Aponchuk
Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A | Shutterstock
Across the United States, immigrant professionals bring grit, global skills, and vision, but often face licensing hurdles, limited credit access, and cultural disconnect. In many industries, these factors delay progress. In beauty, they create a viable route to independence and small business ownership.
The beauty industry is one of the few sectors where self-employment is feasible with low startup costs and immediate return. It’s a practical entry point for individuals with talent and training but limited access to traditional business infrastructure. The growing popularity of independent formats—like booth rentals and single-chair studios—further accelerates the process.
I know this from experience. When I immigrated to the U.S., I didn’t start from nothing. I brought experience and a plan. Within months, I launched Aponchuk Beauty Space in Bellevue, Washington, filling appointments without a marketing budget or a known brand name. What began as a solo venture became the basis for a replicable business framework.
Today, my salon has served over 500 clients and empowered dozens of immigrant specialists through mentorship, training, and career guidance. These are early proof points of a structure that supports new business creation and long-term economic participation.
The Business Model: A Platform for Independent Growth
From the outset, I wanted to avoid the outdated framework of a salon with a rigid hierarchy and passive employees. Instead, I created a structure that could support independent professionals. At Aponchuk Beauty Space, we operate on a booth rental model—often called “rent-a-chair.”
Licensed hair stylists, lash technicians, and brow artists lease fully equipped private workspaces. Each person manages their own business under one roof, benefiting from the shared location, professional environment, and the trust the studio has earned.
According to Salon Saver’s 2023 guide for salon entrepreneurs, this model offers tangible advantages: reduced operating costs, fewer regulatory hurdles, and the flexibility to offer a wider range of services. But for immigrant professionals rebuilding their careers, the most valuable element is often practical: a recognized and reliable place to start again with professional standards in place.
Rather than building from scratch, they enter a stable setting with clear protocols, client traffic, and quality standards already in place. While tenants manage their own services and schedules, they benefit from a carefully maintained studio equipped with:
- Clean, well-lit, fully outfitted cabins for hair, lash, and brow services.
- A reputation built through expert-level service delivery and visible client trust.
- Exposure to a steady stream of high-value clientele within a high-standard environment.
Those who want to go further can train with me directly. I offer lessons in advanced hair restoration techniques, pricing strategy, and product sourcing. That training, paired with day-to-day proximity to high standards, helps professionals gain traction quickly—and keep it.
Image: Aponchuk Beauty Space
Empowering Others: Preparing Professionals for Independent Success
Helping others grow into confident, independent professionals is one of the most meaningful parts of my work. Since launching the studio, I’ve trained dozens of specialists, many of them new to the country. They arrive with raw talent and ambition. I help them turn that into stable income and long-term career prospects.
These professionals don’t just learn advanced techniques. They also gain real-world fluency in how to work within the U.S. beauty industry. My mentorship focuses on both skill development and adaptation: understanding client expectations, setting service pricing, communicating in a new language, and building trust through quality and consistency.
As one of my students, Viola, reflected after her training:
“I liked that there was a very high-quality theory… not just about the outer appearance, but also about the inner appearance of the hair—how it is built… so I could understand why it gets tangled. I liked this theory very much.”
That level of understanding is key. It’s what turns talented individuals into informed professionals—people who not only perform services but understand the science, structure, and strategy behind them.
My program is centered on the methods I’ve developed and refined through years of experience, including:
- Keratin-based Hair Reconstruction: A method that restores the hair’s inner structure using tailored keratin blends and strand-specific temperature control. Nourishing masks precede each treatment and avoid extreme heat to prevent damage.
- Therapeutic Haircutting: A non-polishing method that eliminates split ends without reducing length. This technique enhances treatment results and preserves hair integrity over time.
These proprietary methods are also increasingly in demand. According to McKinsey’s 2022 report on beauty services, the next wave of growth is driven by specialists offering focused expertise, improved experiences, and more control over their schedules.
Source: The beauty battleground: The sprint to win on services | McKinsey & Company
In this context, mentorship is a practical lever. It helps individuals build income, structure services, and operate independently in a post-COVID industry defined by fragmented labor and shifting client expectations..
A Scalable Framework with Economic Reach
Immigrants face licensing obstacles, limited business networks, and unclear pathways to legitimacy. These won’t disappear overnight, but targeted models can provide a practical path forward.
Because each professional works independently, the booth rental system doesn’t rely on hiring or payroll. That lowers liability and increases flexibility for both parties. In turn, it enables:
- Business ownership without high overhead
- Immediate contribution to the tax base
- Activation of underused commercial property
The model adapts to almost any retail space, so it can be implemented in cities across the country, revitalizing underused properties while offering skilled immigrants a clear way to contribute.
This aligns with the concept of necessity entrepreneurship, where individuals launch businesses out of limited alternatives. As noted in a 2023 study on bridging business survival in the hairdressing industry, survival and growth depend on customer satisfaction, competitive edge, and continual training—all of which are built directly into my salon’s framework.
From the start, each specialist I onboard receives high-level education, product knowledge, branding guidance, and access to professional-grade tools. As a result, they’re not just surviving in the market, but elevating it.
The long-term economic benefit is clear. Trained professionals in flexible models contribute to job creation, reduce underemployment, and increase local spending. And because many of these specialists are immigrants, this approach also supports economic integration at scale.
Whether adapted by municipalities, workforce development programs, or private landlords, this framework offers a blueprint for distributed entrepreneurship, turning small, independent businesses into engines of community growth.
Conclusion: Redefining Beauty as Economic Infrastructure
In an economy where immigrants often face systemic barriers to starting a business, Aponchuk Beauty Space’s booth rental model offers a workable solution. By combining affordable space, targeted training, and ongoing mentorship, it creates real pathways to ownership for skilled professionals who might otherwise be locked out of opportunity.
As more cities look for ways to activate their commercial corridors and support underemployed populations, this model offers a tested path forward. Each private studio contributes to broader public value through taxes, jobs, and business formation.
This is what inclusive entrepreneurship looks like in action: accessible, practical, and deeply human. It’s a working framework that creates value for cities, customers, and professionals alike. This is how small businesses become a public good and how local economies grow.
About the Author:
Anna Aponchuk is a beauty entrepreneur, educator, and specialist based in Bellevue, Washington. As the founder of Aponchuk Beauty Space, she has empowered immigrant professionals through mentorship and training while serving over 500 clients. Anna is also known for her proprietary techniques in keratin-based hair restoration and therapeutic haircutting. Beyond her technical expertise, she’s a passionate advocate for inclusive entrepreneurship. Her business model not only provides a pathway to self-employment for beauty professionals but also contributes to local economic growth through job creation.
References:
Laming, D. (2023, September 26). The Rent-a-Chair Model: A Comprehensive Guide for Salon Entrepreneurs. Salon Saver. https://www.salonsaver.co.uk/hairdresser-insurance/the-rent-a-chair-model-a-comprehensive-guide-for-salon-entrepreneurs
Adams, C., Fuller, D., Weaver, K., Ji, A., & Wolfer, A. (2022, July 14). The beauty battleground: The sprint to win on services. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-beauty-battleground-the-sprint-to-win-on-services
Boesch, T., Lim, K., & Nunn, R. (May 2023). Occupational licensing as a barrier to entry for immigrants. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/-/media/assets/papers/community-development-working-papers/2023/occupational-licensing-as-a-barrier-to-entry-for-immigrants.pdf
Kabuya, M., Lentswe, M., Chipunza, C., & Adewumi, S. A. (5, November 2023). Necessity Entrepreneurs’ and Stakeholders’ Strategies: Bridging business survival in the hairdressing salon industry. Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 12(6), 274. https://doi.org/10.36941/ajis-2023-0169
Kerr, S. P., & Kerr, W. R. (June 2016). Immigrant Entrepreneurship. In Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/17-011_da2c1cf4-a999-4159-ab95-457c783e3fff.pdf