May 16, 2017

Meet Diana Monteleone of Meraki Room in Wicker Park

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Diana Monteleone.

Diana, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I and my two partners, Dani McLaren and Taya Dammen met while working in a salon together. After several years or working together and hanging out regularly we developed a friendship and business respect for one another. We were all equally performing in business but our strengths were very different. The three of us were all starting to hit a wall in our careers, facing some personal challenges in our work place and we had reached a breaking point at the most serendipitous moment. I had just attended a weekend long self-development course, while Taya had spent two weeks in New Zealand recharging, just as Dani was looking into some real estate investment opportunities. All three of us were seeking some sort of advancement in life. We had gotten together the night Taya flew home from her trip and realized that our chapters were done and we needed to move on. We drank lots of champagne and wine that night as we cheers-ed to our new beginnings in the future. Our partnership salon idea was conceived that night, with plans to begin saving all of our money in hopes to pursue this dream a year or so down the line.

Little did we know that in less than one calendar year, Meraki Room would exist in our dream location, in our dream space built by us and our families with the most Soul, Creativity and Love that we could have ever asked for (Meraki is a Greek word meaning “the soul, creativity or love put into something or the essence of yourself put into your work).

The process started off strangely easy and quickly became very grueling. We started to call around on real estate that we saw, collected quotes on square footage and pricing, then booked our first showing at 2028 W Division. We were by no means ready to consider renting, but we needed to learn the ropes. The minute we entered the space I knew it would be ours. We started negotiating the lease without a name, figured that all out and leased the space June 2016. After all of our zoning hearings, architect meetings, contractor drama and build out fiascos we opened 7.5 months later on January 19th 2017. Business has been amazing. Knock on wood and praise God, we have not missed one bill, payroll is always on time and we are working up funds to pay back our investments!

Has it been a smooth road?
Not a smooth road at all. We stumbled on our space very fast, but then as soon as we were locking it in, the drama began. We negotiated a four month rent abatement right before we opened because we learned that our zoning wasn’t in compliance to open a hair salon in this specific space. We had to apply for a special use permit, find an attorney to represent us and push the case along, then hold our breath till we got our permits passed. We signed the lease, then hired our attorney the next day, while he was doing his work, we diligently worked with two designers on the layout and design. As they were creating and recreating spec after spec, we realized that they didn’t have the legal credentials that we needed in an architect and had to shop for a new one. When we found our guy, we swallowed real hard on the price that it was going to cost us, but we had to do it! We hired our architect and he began sketching up possibilities for our layout. What we thought would be an easy change over turned into an almost full gut rehab of the space.

Once our layout and design was complete and ready for submission for building permits our contractor fell through and it was back to the drawing board to get another GC locked down. Calls, emails, meetings had and meetings we got stood up on, walk throughs and multiple quotes later, we finally locked down our general contractor and team mid-September (3.5 months after the space was originally leased). We hoped and prayed for a speedy build out, but ran into challenge after challenge once we began. We had to reconfigure and redesign plumbing, electric, HVAC and had to forfeit ever having a washer and drying in our unit because of ventilation challenges. We are part of a condo association (which is amazing now that we are open), and had to get many approvals from our building management company and our out of town land lords during the process. Assumed days turned into weeks and into months to get approvals and move forward on certain parts of the build out.

We had two truckloads of boxes of equipment and chairs for the salon that were over-staying their welcome at the manufacturer’s warehouse in the burbs so we had to rent a U-haul truck and transport them to our contractor’s motorcycle crew’s warehouse in Humboldt Park till we finished the construction and could put everything together. Eventually what seemed like a lifetime later, we set an opening date that wasn’t even that realistic to where we were at with construction, but we pushed, worked our tails off, had our foot up certain people’s behinds and we officially started taking clients on January 19th, 2017!

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Our salon is a full-service salon. We pride ourselves on the quality of service and products that we provide. We did a lot of research on what was the best hair care line available that also had the best performance. We made a partnership with Davines as our main hair care line and haven’t looked back since. Davines considers themselves an artisan crafted line and works with local farmers around Italy and Sicily to offer the most pure products possible. Their extensive line has everything to basic daily shampoos to specialized products to help imbalanced PH in scalps and their color line is free of harmful chemicals that cause irritation to skin.

Since we had decided to commit to working with Davines, we began a series of education to learn all about the line and we continue to strive to be as knowledgeable as possible to use the right arsenal for our clients’ exact needs, while maintaining the integrity of their hair to our best ability.

Our salon was designed by us and our families which has been one of our favorite parts of the whole journey. The stations, color bar table and cabinets, front desk and wash house barn door were all hand crafted by our dads. The salon has an urban chic design, full of different wood grains and stains and tons of hand welded metal. There are plants throughout the salon that have all been gifts from our clients and families. The entire front facade of our space is wall to wall, floor to ceiling windows with glass entry doors so it floods the whole space with natural light making everyone look their best even before we style their hair! It’s our home, we love it and we are so proud to share it with our long-time loyal guests and we have since attracted so many new clients since we have opened.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Chicago is perfect for our business. Chicagoans appreciate quality and hospitality. They are conscious of excellence, but are also a super supportive community. We love doing business in Chicago and wouldn’t have it any other way.

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