It was after the loss of two pregnancies that Ayanda Soares and her husband started to wonder whether she needed time out from her stressful job as a social worker.
Ayanda, now 40, said: “I always wanted to do something that didn’t require me to write essays because I was dyslexic.” Following school she worked at a youth hostel with children who had run away from home. One of the managers spotted her abilities and asked her if she wanted to pursue a career in social work.
It seemed like a no-brainer to Ayanda, especially as other members of her family were in health and care work, including her twin sister.
Originally from Reading, Ayanda moved to west London in 2014, and worked for multiple authorities. She was passionate and dedicated to her job, but things became much more fraught when she was moved to a department deciding whether children should be removed from their families.
She describes it as “one of the most difficult departments that you’ll ever work in”. During this time Ayanda got married, offering some much-needed joy and respite from work stresses. But when she tragically lost two pregnancies, she and her husband wondered whether she should leave her hectic role.
Ayanda decided she would resign, but was wary of being without an income. Although she has an “incredible husband”, who was ready to support her financially and emotionally, self-reliance and independence are very important to Ayanda – which she attributes to being raised by a single mum.
Ayanda also had a vision for the future: she wanted to develop her side hustle which had grown and grown over the years.
Since being a teenager, she had always enjoyed grading people’s hair and wigs, and a hobby had evolved into a small hairdressing business. She felt now was the moment to see if it could properly take off.
In preparation for leaving her role as a social worker, Ayanda “built up a huge client base”, hairdressing on weekends and sometimes in the evening. During this period Ayanda fell pregnant with twins. She and her husband took it as the sign to take the plunge and leave social work, fully developing her business. Thus House of Hair UK, was born.
Though pregnant, Ayanda was energetic in developing her business and took financial risks. The first was to put a deposit down on a space for her studio. Serendipitously, her twin sister had been looking to rent a business space in Ealing for her own agency, which specialises in brain injury rehabilitation.
They decided to team up, so that Ayanda could upscale her hair business. Ayanda invested £18,000, which she had from the sale of a flat, and £2,000 for equipment and advertising on Facebook and Gumtree.
However, just as her salon was getting off the ground, she was struck by an infection and gave birth prematurely to her twins, a boy and a girl, when they were just six months old. It was a hugely worrying time for Ayanda and her husband, as well as derailing the plan she had for her business.
Even in spite of this enormous upheaval, in which Ayanda was constantly visiting her twins – who had been placed in different hospitals – as well as losing clients, House of Hair powered through, and today its future looks very different.
Ayanda’s twins are now nine years old; both are on the autistic spectrum, and have chronic lung disease as a result of their premature births, but still thriving in their own ways.
While looking after them, Ayanda has gone on to manage 23 members of staff and a business that counts classical singer Sarah Brightman as a client.
Ayanda says her client list includes women from “all walks of life” and “different financial brackets”, from lawyers to stay-at-home mums, to school teachers. The salon caters to a diverse demographic offering textured extensions at affordable prices.
“We have six different textures, we’re able to cater for the Spanish lady with curly hair, or the black lady with a little bit of afro in her hair, or the black lady who doesn’t want to chemically straighten her hair at all, and wants a more coarse blown-out texture.” Ayanda adds that this demographic has been typically ignored in the hair industry.
She also believes that social media has been key to the salon’s success, with the staff regularly posting across different channels. Clearly, whatever Ayanda’s doing, it’s working. She tells me that the salon turned over £700,000 in revenue last year – quite the turnaround from its tough beginning nine years ago.
“Despite the stresses, I wouldn’t change a thing,” says Ayanda.