Lifelong friends Sara Davis and Morgan Taylor have been bonded by their love of working as hair stylists. After 15 years of working as beauticians, the Ravenna locals are ready to be their own bosses as they have opened Rooted & Co Salon, which celebrated a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Wednesday afternoon at 256 West Main Street in downtown Ravenna.
“For both of us this is a new path,” Taylor told The Weekly Villager. “I love doing hair because I have always just wanted to help people. It is more meaningful than I can even put into words, just making someone feel beautiful about themselves is something that makes me feel so passionate.”
Rooted & Co Salon originally opened its doors in mid-May but was officially welcomed to the neighborhood by prominent Ravenna officials, including the Ravenna Area Chamber of Commerce, with an official grand opening celebration.
For Davis and Taylor, opening their own hair salon is a giant step but one worth taking as they not only seek to create their own legacy but also leave their mark on Ravenna for their children to be proud of.
“We were ready,” Davis noted. “We knew we could do this and were ready to show our children we could do this and wanted to make ourselves proud.”
Davis and Taylor’s friendship started when Davis, a 2007 Rootstown graduate, started working as a hair stylist at Famous Hair in Ravenna, and Taylor’s father was one of her regular clients.
According to Taylor, a 2013 Southeast alum, her father always had nothing but kind words to say about Davis and when she graduated from high school, she also landed a job working at Famous Hair.
Davis said that she loved playing with hair at a young age, including doing the hair on her Barbie dolls and Cabbage Patch kids. But Taylor learned to appreciate having hair at an early age when her childhood battle with leukemia left her without hair for a good part of her adolescence.
“I loved playing with other people’s hair, and I think that sparked my love for creating with hair and making people feel beautiful because I know what it feels to not feel that way,” she said.
Taylor added that not having hair as a child has enabled her to relate to other people who don’t have hair or are experiencing hair loss, and she has translated her own personal experiences into helping people find ways to discover their inner beauty.
Taylor credited Davis for showing her the ropes when she started out at Famous Hair and said that they became very popular in the Ravenna community.
“Sara has been doing this for a long time and it is just where I might overthink or have anxiety, she is like ‘Girl, it is okay, you are good,’” Taylor said. “I was very grateful to be where I was, and I am happy that I started there and got hired there. It was a good decision for me, and I am very lucky to have worked next to her.”
After Famous Hair was acquired by a big conglomerate, the lifelong friends left the business and began working at the Joseph Daniels Salon for approximately a decade before deciding to venture out on their own.
They opened their business in a building that was the original home of another hair salon, 2illxcuts, which moved due to expansion; they have hit the ground running.
Davis said that the names Rooted & Co is since each of their families have become rooted to the Ravenna community, and they wanted to pay tribute to that by including it in the name of their business.
“Our families are rooted here in Ravenna, and we are very blessed to be able to open a business where our roots are and where we started so that is where the name came from,” Davis said.
Although this marks the first time that the duo are actual business owners, Rooted & Co Salon has thrived as they have developed a loyal customer base after 15 years of working in the industry and it has kept them busy from the moment, they opened their doors.
In addition to having a loyal customer base follow them into their new salon, the duo has also attributed their early success to creating a homey atmosphere to their salon, where everyone can immediately feel safe the moment they walk in the door.
Although the salon has not even been open for a year, the pair acknowledged that an expansion is certainly possible as they seek to grow their client base.
