Beachcombers hair and nail salon thriving in Fairport Harbor

When Chelsea Wickman decided to start her own hair and nail salon, she learned that some people weren’t too excited about the location she chose for the shop.

It was back in 2015 when Wickman established Beachcombers, based at 213 High St. in Fairport Harbor.

“It can get a little discouraging, you’re telling somebody you’re opening a business, and a lot of people are going, ‘Fairport? Why do you want to open in Fairport? Why not Mentor, Willoughby?’ ” she said. “I was like, ‘You guys — Willoughby didn’t just start in a day. Businesses had to come there to make it lively.'”

Wickman didn’t allow the doubters and critics to change her mind about Fairport Harbor, and nearly seven years later, Beachcombers remains anchored in the village’s bustling commercial district.

“Business has been great,” she said. “You don’t realize how many people do come to Fairport Harbor.”

Beachcombers provides a full range of hair services, along with manicures and pedicures, and Wickman is one of five stylists working at the salon.

While she strictly cuts and styles hair, her four colleagues at Beachcombers do both hair and nails.

“All of my girls here are real passionate,” she said. “Everybody always has a smile on their face.”

The stylists at Beachcombers take yearly classes to master new trends and techniques for beautifying hair and nails, Wickman said. During a May 9 interview, she also said that Beachcombers has one booth available for a stylist to rent at the busy salon.

“We have people that drive pretty far to get here — from places like Ashtabula, Medina and even the West Side of Cleveland,” she said.

Although some business owners in downtown Fairport Harbor take a break and shut down their establishments during January and February (or perhaps until early spring), Beachcombers stays open all year round.

“Because I think women just always want their hair done,” Wickman said.

She began her career as a professional hairstylist about 19 years ago. She got the idea to start her own business while working as a stylist at a Mentor salon, where she was renting booth space.

Wickman credited her husband, David, with giving her the inspiration to launch her own salon.

“He’s my business backbone, and he was kind of like, ‘We could open something like this,'” she recalled.

They then began looking for a building, and their search eventually extended into Fairport Harbor. The village was a familiar place to her.

“I grew up in Painesville Township and spent many summer days down here at the beach (at Lake Metroparks Fairport Harbor Lakefront Park),” she said.

As part of their research for a business location, the Wickmans, who live in Chardon Township, looked at yearly attendance figures at the beach. They also learned about the many different community and business events in Fairport Harbor that attract people into the village’s commercial district.

She also received encouragement to locate her shop in Fairport Harbor from the owners of The Gravel Pit, a store at 221 High St. featuring reclaimed vintage, industrial and customized furniture and art, as well as home decor.

“We were talking to them, and they were telling us they had just been open for one year at that point,” Wickman recalled. “They were doing really well, and they were like, ‘We just need more businesses to come down here.'”

They felt even more convinced about downtown Fairport Harbor as a good site when they saw a building that was for rent.

“My husband goes, ‘I love old buildings. It’s an old building, and it’s right by the water. It’s two of the things that you love. I think we should go for it,'” she said.

Beachcombers opened in July 2015 with Wickman as the sole stylist. Two month later, she added three more stylists to her staff.

“There were four of us working here, and we had, I think it was like about 450 new customers in our first year, which is like unheard of, even in a busy salon on Mentor Avenue,” she said. “So that was huge.”

Beachcombers has enjoyed solid support from Fairport Harbor residents, Wickman added.

“So we do have a huge clientele of people who live in Fairport,” she said. “Because they can walk here. And they’re really passionate about seeing businesses succeed here.”

Wickman said many of her clients from the Mentor-based salon converted to getting their hair cut and styled at Beachcombers.

“But there were few that were like, ‘Fairport is too far,’” she said. “So I would say, ‘Come early, go sit down by the beach, take a little walk, then come up (to the salon).’ Then people would go, ‘Oh, I love coming down here. It feels like I’m on vacation.'”

To convey the atmosphere of a lakefront town, the interior of the salon is adorned with nautical items and decorations, and signs with slogans about beaches and life by the lake.

“So a lot of people comment on that, that it doesn’t look like a typical salon, because it kind of has all the beachy decorations in here,” WIckman said. “And it’s funny, over the years, so many people have said they feel like they’re at a vacation home or in a beach house. And they’ll say, ‘It’s real relaxing. I could sit here all day.'”