OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) - 3 News Now is continuing to highlight women-owned businesses in Omaha as we celebrate Women's History Month. One mother-daughter duo represents a woman-owned beauty salon bringing fresh ideas and business practices to the area.
"I think that at the level that I'm playing at, I am really one of the first female salon owners to have a salon this large," said Somer Krueger, founder and owner of Trios.
Krueger might be successful now but her journey was not an easy one.
"It was actually very challenging to go to the bank and get a loan without my husband's signature,” she said. “I couldn't lease a space without my husband's signature. Even though I was the president of the company, I still had to have my partner sign off on anything that I was doing or did and I couldn't work independently for myself,” said Krueger.
Being a businesswoman was never a foreign idea for Krueger as her mother started the family trend by opening her own tech company back in the '80s. But she didn't realize how rare it was until she started networking.
"When I got into the business, I found it really remarkable that the sales people, and the people who ran the businesses that I was working with, were all men,” Krueger said. “It wasn't until then that I was like, 'Why is everything controlled by men? How do we get a seat at that table? How do we make a difference there?”
Together with her daughter, Trios is bringing fresh business concepts to the beauty industry, one being that they removed gender-based pricing for haircuts.
"We have LGBTQ clients. That is not any of our business to ask or even try to charge based on,” said Trios manager Ryan Jones. “We should be charging based on the time and the talent, so it was something that we were happy to eliminate from our menu and be more inclusive."
They are also reducing their carbon footprint by being zero waste and recycling things such as the foil used to color hair.
"We recycle about 150 pounds just every couple of weeks that we are taking to a local steel recycler,” said Jones.
Their shampoo bar is full of reusable glass containers.
"We found that not only does it look nice, but we realized that we can buy our shampoo and conditioners in bulk sizes so that we are using way less plastic, and we’re not having to purchase pumps that are not recyclable,” said Jones.
Even the hair gets re-purposed.
"I think it's really cool that it goes full circle, where we have clients come in and get their hair cut and then we are using that hair in compost that's getting picked up and putting nutrients into the soil, and then that is being used in local community gardens,” said Jones.
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