Behind a large red dot and an inconspicuous door on Vězeňská Street in the center of Prague lies a hair salon with a unique hair spa and concept store offering carefully selected fashion items. This is well known not only to insiders from the hairdressing and fashion scene, but also to crowds of satisfied customers. Red Salon is celebrating ten years since its opening, and owner Jana Šafářová tells us how she and her team managed to create a space in the historic center of Prague where you can forget about the outside world and feel as if you have been transported to the set of your favorite British film or perhaps to one of the cool hair salons (or bars?) in central London. And then you’ll call home and tell them all about it with enthusiasm.

However, around 2012, the Red Salon space would have transported you to a horror movie rather than a relaxing holiday treatment. It had undergone a transformation from a neglected former restaurant with no electricity, where you had to use a flashlight to navigate the winding underground rooms and avoid the moldy ventilation system. Despite all this, Jana Šafářová was captivated by the local genius loci, and after many consultations with film architect Martin Kurel, the contours of today’s hair salon were clearer, even in the dark cellars. When Red Salon opened on January 13, 2013, the first clients couldn’t believe it was a brand new business. Martin Kurel paid attention to every detail to make the space feel cozy and lived-in from the start. “I design apartments for films where it has to look like someone has been living there for thirty years,” he liked to tell Jana.

Jana Šafářová sought inspiration for setting up a hair salon offering an experience unparalleled in Prague in London, where she went on the recommendation of the well-known Czech hair stylist Mirka Myšička Hajdová. She subsequently worked with Mirka for eight years, who gave the concept a clear identity and played a major role in shaping Red Salon. In order to find out what London salons had to offer at the time, Jana calmly had three blow-dries a day, which, given the density of traffic in the British capital, often meant getting into a taxi with her hair still half wet. “I had a notebook with me, where I wrote down what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what completely captivated me after visiting each salon. When I saw three dots above the door in Notting Hill instead of the name of the hair salon, I immediately knew what my dream salon would look like. At that moment, however, I was still miles away from any kind of realization,” recalls Jana.

The beginnings are never quite a walk in the park, and when you want to build a business or your own brand in completely uncharted waters, this is doubly true. Jana Šafářová began writing the story of Red Salon after maternity leave, when she no longer wanted to return to her original job in the technical field and was thinking about a change. She wanted to work with beautiful products in the field of fashion or cosmetics that she would love, understand, and meet the end customer in person. And she succeeded. “I took a retraining course in hairdressing, but I found that cutting and styling hair wasn’t the right path for me. I sought advice from leading hairdressers in the field, but when you open a salon, no one tells you that instead of a regular washing machine and dryer, you need professional machines that can handle continuous operation, or that it’s a good idea to connect the electricity so that the fuses don’t blow when you turn on all the hair dryers for the first time. After spending my early days taking towels home every evening to wash and dry them overnight, I’m now an expert in such situations,” laughs the salon owner, who unfortunately went through many unpleasant experiences while realizing her dream.

Continuous stress accompanied her not only before the opening of Red Salon in January 2013, but also during the first year. “When we finally opened, I didn’t feel any relief, quite the opposite. Something was constantly going wrong, and because I was solely responsible for the salon’s operations, I ended up burning out, something I had only read about before and often taken lightly. And then, after a series of events, I broke down and cried, and without my husband and subsequent therapy, I would not have been able to get out of that state where I was incapable of doing anything. Fortunately, today I know how to deal with such situations. In the coming years, I want to focus mainly on building the salon’s good reputation, not on building the salon on the famous names of hairdressing stars. This is a huge change from how we used to operate.”