Hair Salon Finds Secret to Success: Keep It Moving

Maureen and Max Derseweh figure the time is right.

There already are mobile gyms, mobile car repair services, mobile dog groomers, a mobile makeup van and hundreds of mobile fast-food restaurants.

“It’s time for the mobile beauty salon,” said Max, an award-winning cosmetologist who left the confines of his Newport Beach salon to take his show on the road. “Busy men and women executives like the idea of us coming to them.”

Derseweh said people are willing to pay extra for front-door service, and working single mothers can keep their weekends free by getting their hair done at work in a custom-built, 30-foot-long beauty salon.

He charges men $23 and women $30.

“We can do an entire bridal party and go where the wedding takes place,” the Anaheim resident said, “and that makes sure everyone gets to the wedding on time.”

Even neighbors can set up a date for the trailer on their own street to get their hair done, he added.

And they can get the full treatment, including a manicure. For visits to corporate offices, a consultant comes along to give color and figure analysis.

“Later, we’ll have a 40-foot-long salon that will offer massages and have a tanning booth, in addition to everything else you find in a regular beauty salon,” Max said. “And that includes a microwave oven and a refrigerator.”

Maureen Derseweh, who met Max at a seminar on positive thinking and became engaged to him the next day, acts as the business officer and sees a future for the beauty salon on wheels.

“We’ve attended conventions and showed people what can be done in a beauty salon on wheels,” she said. “We even do business while we’re there.” The Dersewehs plan to franchise the business, called Rendezvous Images. They figure a fully equipped trailer and truck costs about $60,000.

“It takes 300 customers a month to make it a profitable business,” said Max, a graduate of Anaheim’s Loara High School who has been cutting and setting hair for seven years but now trains hair stylists to do the work in his trailer salon.

“I’ve always wanted to do more than style hair,” he said. “I want to train stylists and I want to make a lot of money.”

The couple’s hopes of a successful business may not depend on just customers. A new state law will outlaw mobile beauty salons in January.

“We’re hopeful the law will be changed by that time to allow us and others to continue,” he said. “The people who wrote the law think a mobile beauty salon would be difficult to regulate.”

The Dersewehs are writing letters and talking to state politicians to change the law before it takes effect.

That 250-foot-long pedestrian bridge at UC Irvine, designed by Robert Englekirk & Associates of Newport Beach, is no ordinary cast-in-place structure, you know.

It was just named a winner of the 1987 Design Award by the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute and was only one of seven projects nationwide selected for the award.

It serves as both a symbolic and structural link between the university and the community and features extensive cantilevering to create a sense of balance and a floating image.

It’s a beauty.

Acknowledgments--Esperanza High School teacher Mike Smith of Anaheim, who teaches U.S. history, consumer education and family living and is an avid surfer and fisherman, has won the Orange County Department of Education’s Outstanding Contributions to Education Award.