Soon after starting her Just Cuts salon franchise in Shellharbour, Lynne Ryan remembers going to franchisee meetings, a world away from the current international conferences.
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"Our meetings consisted of going to a coffee shop in Engadine, with the other franchisee, [founder] Denis McFadden, and Elizabeth, who worked for Dennis," Ms Ryan said.
"The main agenda was lunch."
Thirty years on, Ms Ryan is hanging up the clippers, and passing on her network of Just Cuts stores in the Illawarra, after having been one of the first franchisees in the salon business.
While the hair salon may be a staple feature of shopping centres throughout Australia, Ms Ryan said it was a different world when she first opened her Shellharbour salon in 1991.
The sole parent of three children, with a mortgage at 18 per cent, the former wedding photographer was working as a newsagent during the day and taking photos at night and was looking for a way to balance work and personal life. Mr McFadden, who is Ms Ryan's cousin, had recently returned from working in the UK and proposed the idea of opening a Just Cuts salon.
"I thought it was a fabulous idea and I believed in it, and I thought that I'd give it a go, because I was going to lose the house anyway," she said.
Ms Ryan saw the potential of the new model of hairdressing but came up against banks that were unwilling to give her a loan.
"No one was going to give someone with three children, sole supporter, a loan. So I asked Dennis to take me to his bank, and I walked in and his bank manager was a woman, and I thought, 'Hey, I've got a chance,'" Ms Ryan said.
"A couple of years later, I was at one of our franchise meetings and I looked across the table and here's my bank manager sitting there. 'What are you doing here,' I said. 'I just bought some salons.'
"I've made a good decision," Ms Ryan remembered.
Just 18 months after the Shellharbour store was established, Ms Ryan expanded to Warrawong Plaza and in 2000 opened Wollongong Just Cuts followed by Dapto in 2007.
Over the years, Ms Ryan estimates she has overseen 15 fit-outs, and while not coming from a salon background herself, did pick up the clippers herself.
"The stylists have me a bit of a hard time to start with, so I thought I need to go and see what this is all about and how it all works. So I took myself off to TAFE and understood what it was all about."
Now, stepping back from the business, Ms Ryan is handing over the owner's scissors to some of the stylists who have worked for her over the years and the final two salons at Shellharbour and Dapto to Castle Towers Just Cuts owner Mohan Balasubramanian.
"Mohan has taken my team out to dinner as part of the handover, so we're keeping it in the family," she said.
While some things might have changed since the opening of her first salon in 1991, Ms Ryan said there are others that stay the same.
"The mullet always comes back."
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