The demise of J.C. Penney in the Upper Valley is really messing with some people’s heads.
One of the West Lebanon department store’s biggest draws — along with its Sephora makeup counter — has been J.C. Penney’s InStyle hair salon, which has attracted faithful clientele from all over the Upper Valley for nearly 30 years. A throwback to an era when going to the department store meant both an excursion to shop for new clothes and the chance to try a new ’do, the salon’s closing has thrown into uncertainty the relationships between stylists and their customers, some which have lasted for decades.
“We had a good crew. We were very happy joking around. We got to know each other’s customers,” Beth Cadreact, who has worked as a stylist at the J.C. Penney salon for a total of 28 years, said while holding back tears. “It’s like a big family.”
J.C. Penney reopened Friday for 10 to 16 weeks while the store conducts a liquidation sale. The salon has also reopened under limited hours “for our stylists to connect with all their clients and let them know where they will be after J.C. Penney” closes, the store announced on its Facebook page.
(Sephora said after the store closes customers can buy its products online at sephora.com.)
But other salons were already extending job opportunities for J.C. Penney’s soon-to-be out-of-work stylists.
Vanessa’s Salon owner Vanessa Perron on Monday posted on her salon’s Facebook page a notice directed to “West Lebanon J.C. Penney stylists” that “we are looking for the exceptional colorists. Your clients are now looking for you!! We want you to have your clients back! Our stylists are already busy and we have room for you to get back to doing what you love.”
Perron, sparing a few minutes on the phone Tuesday before an afternoon of back-to-back appointments, said the five stylists at her salon have more customers than they can handle with the backlog from the pandemic shutdown.
“We’re booking way into July right now,” Perron said.
Perron, who rents out workstations to individual hairdressers to operate as independent businesses, describes her operation as “an umbrella for other people to make a living.” She said she hopes stylists from J.C. Penney “will be encouraged to finally step up and be self-employed because that is where their careers will really take off” since “they will not have to give 50% of their money to somebody else.”
A good stylist can have 200 regular clients, according to Perron.
Unlike many hairstylists who rent stations at salons, those who worked at J.C. Penney were employees of the chain store. J.C. Penney’s employee benefits — 401(k) plan, health and dental insurance, paid vacation and sick days — were one of the reasons stylist Jane Potter enjoyed working at the West Lebanon store for 29 years.
“It’s a great company to work for,” said Potter, of Hartford, who has cut back to working only a few days a week. “I’ve been working in salons since 1970, and this was the only one that offered retirement.”
(The Upper Valley salon community is small enough that it is not unusual for stylists to know each other: Potter hired Perron out of school into her first salon job.)
But all day on your feet — including working long shifts that can last 12 hours — can be grueling. Still, the schedule has advantages.
“I’d do three double shifts and I was tired, but it was well worth having Fridays and weekends off,” said Cadreact, who lives in Enfield.
Crystal Hicks, owner of New England School of Hair Design in West Lebanon, said she remembers going to the J.C. Penney salon to get her hair done for proms.
“It’s been a very good place to send our students and graduates,” Hicks said, “And they’ve been good about coming to our school and speaking with and educating our students to show techniques and inviting them into the salon.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down businesses, Hicks said “salons were banging down my door looking for stylists.” Although she said the demand may take a while to build again as salons welcome back customers, in the long-term career prospects are excellent.
“When I go to job fairs, I tell people, ‘A robot is not going to take your job away,’ ” Hicks said.
Cadreact said she is halfway through calling the names on her eight-page list of clients (with 20 names per page) to let them know that she will be ready to see them at the J.C. Penney salon on Monday.
“I’m looking forward to getting back, even if it’s only for three months,” she said.
InfuseMe, the store in the Powerhouse Mall that sells artisanal olive oils, balsamic vinegars and gourmet food items, will close at the end of the month, a victim of economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Co-owner Jennifer Driscoll, who owned the store with partner Gail Place, said that despite “a lot of great things happening” such as the Hanover Co-op and Dan & Whit’s in Norwich beginning to carry InfuseMe’s products, the interruption caused by COVID-19 made it “difficult to maintain the business.
Driscoll was working on the business side of clinical research trials at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in 2014 when a visit to a South Carolina olive oil store inspired her to import the idea to the Upper Valley. The store attracted a following of customers who, once they sampled the wild mushroom and sage olive oil or raspberry dark balsamic vinegar, forswore the supermarket brands.
“A lot of our customers are devastated by this news, but cash flow is a problem,” Driscoll said. “They have been great since I announced this and we are so grateful to live our dream for the last six years.”
There have been so many local bank branch closings in recent years driven by a shift to online banking that I’ve been having difficulty keeping count of them all, but the latest branch slated to close is Bank of New Hampshire’s branch in Woodsville.
Laconia, N.H.-based BNH said its Woodsville branch at 55 Central St. will close “no later than July 31,” making the bank’s nearest branch 21 miles away in Littleton, followed by Lincoln, 25 miles away.
For those keeping tabs, I count BNH closing Woodsville as at least the fifth local bank branch to close in the Upper Valley over the past five years: Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, which acquired the former Lake Sunapee Bank in 2017, last year closed its Route 4 branch at Waterman Place in Quechee and its drive-up window in Newport. Citizens Bank shuttered its branch in White River Junction in 2016 and closed branches in Lebanon and Springfield in 2018. Claremont Savings Bank closed its Cornish Flat branch in 2015.
On the other hand, as much as banking is changing, Springfield, Vt.-based One Credit Union opened a new $600,000 branch in Newport in February, and Ledyard National Bank is expanding its presence in Concord — where it entered the market by opening a wealth management office a few years ago — with plans to open a walk-in retail branch downtown later this year.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
