Beauty: Signature23

Pro beach-volleyball player Suzanne Stonebarger loved life in the sand, but her passion for makeup drove her to start Signature23, an eco-friendly, all-natural lifestyle skincare line that is a growing trend on the pro-beach courts. “Having success in my sport and getting quite a bit of PR in the volleyball world gave me the confidence to get my line started,” she says. And she counts a little luck toward her improving outlook. “Through the people I knew, I met a pretty famous chemist in the industry who was looking to step away from the corporate lines and was ready to take a chance on someone less known. She first became my mentor, and now we’re working together developing the next products.”

Stonebarger says that patience and perseverance are two traits entrepreneurs could benefit from. “By nature we’re driven people, and patience is sometimes hard, but a lot of starting a business comes with trial and error, and if you’re just barreling ahead, you risk not learning from your mistakes or missteps,” she explains. Another mistake entrepreneurs sometimes make is not reaching out to their support system: family and friends. “I didn’t want to talk to them about issues in my business at first because they were already helping me out financially, and I didn’t want to overburden them. But as my business grew, I realized that they were my best asset. They always have my best interest at heart, and most important is the fact that they’re always honest.”

Another benefit of family and friends is enlisting them to help market a product on a budget. "I don't have the money for a big, splashy launch. And since this business started by word of mouth, I find that when people get their hands on a product and it comes from a trusted source, they're more likely to use it." she says. And getting product into a potential customer's hands is half the battle. "Once they try it, the product speaks for itself," she adds.

Hair: KK Salon

For Karena Nigale, a celebrity clientele is de rigeur in her salon based in the heart of Manhattan’s Wall Street area. Being on the East Coast means that she and her stylists don’t often create their looks for the actual ceremony, but they have an Oscars strategy nonetheless because they see a flood of customers coming in seeking to look like the stars. “I remind my staff to take notes during the show. Then I gather my staff afterward so we can go over the styles we saw, make sure everyone’s familiar with how to achieve those looks, and talk about how we can move those styles further, edgier,” she says.

Raised in Eastern Europe, she’s now living out her American dream as a successful entrepreneur who has one large location and two smaller ones. “My first place was a tiny shop with only two chairs. And as the business grew, I was forced to rent a loft above the shop and run part of the operation from there,” she says. “Here I was, raising my daughter and cutting hair in my living room.” Nigale ran into what’s now a problem for many small businesses: getting capital to fund growth once they turn successful. With the economy unsteady and her lack of credit history in the U.S., finding the extra cash was hard. “Banks didn’t want to touch me. I had some money from my family, but it wasn’t enough, so I used my personal credit cards, which thankfully had a generous line of credit on them,” she says.

Her gamble worked, and even as businesses were closing around her, Nigale took her money and invested it right back in her business and her staff. “It’s key in business is not just to follow but to also set trends,” she says. With that in mind, she’s careful when selecting stylists. “We have a lot of European stylists who are keyed in to trends happening overseas—which take time coming Stateside. By the times the styles show up here, we’ve already tweaked them and made them our own,” she adds. And despite the recession, she sees women still spending money on their hair. Besides skin, “hair is the most important accessory women have because they wear it with everything. So they’re willing to come in and make sure it’s being taken care of,” she says. “We see women cutting costs when it comes to clothing, coffee, even eating out. But when it comes to their hair, they’ll save for weeks.” That’s good news for others trying to break into the industry. “Everyone wants to be pretty. Once you know that and you believe in yourself, it’s time to take the risk,” she says. A risk that has worked out very well for her.