Penzone Salon + Spa just toasted 50 years of success, but it isn’t looking to rest on its laurels. Debbie Penzone, president and CEO—who has worked at the salon for 32 years and has been married to salon owner Charles Penzone for 20—spearheaded a reimagined salon concept, beginning with a new outpost in Dublin, OH. “We asked, who are we and how can we be relevant for the next 50 years?” she says.
A refreshment station, surrounded by shelves of retail.
Debbie Penzone, CEO and president
Additionally, the salon boasts a multisensory lather room with shampoo beds and aromatherapy where guests can also get treatments like head and arm massages; a color bar; a spa; a Beauty Zone that offers express services like facials and eyebrow waxing; a nail salon where guests wear a blindfold and a headset that plays meditation, simultaneously get a manicure and pedicure, and zen out; a holistic cafe with plant-based food; and a social room, which Penzone says is the pillar of the new salon concept.
The expansive lather room.
“With that social room, we’ve been able to host evenings of enlightenment, bringing in organizations like the American Heart Association or Komen Columbus Race for the Cure and allowing our community to come together, talk and share, or host Pinot and Peels, a ticketed event that’s like a girls’ night out but with facials,” she says. Those events have helped boost retail 35 percent, she adds. Its most recent event in November, a fall trends body-positivity fashion show, sold out.
“I feel that message is at the heart of our new concept,” says Penzone, who plans to expand the new model to its other locations in Ohio. “We’re beyond beauty. I want to get that out there in our industry: We don’t decide what beauty is; we’re here to help guests find their empowerment.”