Fenix’s business story
A service model from around the world with “Marjo-like” richness.
Marjo Fischer was supposed to be a chemist, but the academic world seemed completely strange. Having found her own thing through her job as a bus driver, the beauty entrepreneur is inspired by people and every three years or so she finds herself faced with a new challenge.
In 2005, Marjo Fischer proudly taped the windows of her shop in Matinkylä, Espoo. The brand new logo read Beauty Centre Fenix. One of the entrepreneurs in the neighbourhood happened to be there and said with a laugh: a beauty centre! A mother and daughter, one a hairdresser and the other a beautician.
Although Marjo no longer actively remembers that moment, it sometimes comes back to her as part of the Fenix story. I wonder if now, with around 30 employees and four offices in the capital region, the name would be justified?
Even when she was in cosmetology school, Marjo knew she wanted to start her own business. The perfect name was chosen well in advance: the rise of a phoenix from the ashes to a new golden life was an inspiring metaphor for Marjo. At the time, she had no vision of one day running such a big business, but for a woman of action who is always inspired to create something new, it has happened partly by chance. By listening to her own heart and intuition.
– At first I thought I could never hire other beauticians because I would lose something of my own. But I have found a wonderful group of beauty professionals who share my values and work with as much passion as I do,” says Marjo.
Already in 2008, when Marjo left to study for a degree of Bachelor of Beauty and Esthetics at the University of Applied Sciences, hiring a colleague was the only option. Balancing work and study as a mother of a young child was an equation that brings a sweat to Marjo’s forehead when she thinks about it. She had attended cosmetology school when her daughter was a baby, but back then the booking books weren’t full of clients yet.
But we got through that too. Like everything else so far. And there’s been plenty of that, by the way.
Present for the customer from start to finish
So what is Marjo and Fenix’s own thing? In all its simplicity, the will to do things better than the others. Let’s take one illustrative example.
You may have been to a beauty salon where the beautician leaves for a break or other activities while the mask is on your face. After lying alone in silence for a while, you start to wonder how long was this part of the treatment supposed to last. She didn’t just forget me here, did she?
This never happens in Fenix. If you pay for a 90-minute treatment, you get the full 90 minutes. You can even give a relaxing head massage while the mask takes effect. Breaks are taken between clients, not during the treatment.
– I like to travel and I always visit local beauty salons when I’m travelling, because as a client I usually get either good ideas or cautionary tales. One of the things I have brought from abroad is our way of paying attention to the client beyond the treatment room.
If you pay for a 90-minute treatment, you will be served
for the full 90 minutes.
This means that with Fenix, the service experience always starts from the moment the customer opens the front door and only ends when the customer closes the door. In Marjo’s opinion, customers are far too often left to fend for themselves, both in Finland and abroad, and she simply doesn’t like that. That’s why it’s never done in her own salons.
Almost an academic bus driver
When recruiting new cosmetologists, Marjo’s focus is on the personality and values of the candidate. A job can be learned by doing, but the right kind of service spirit is often strongly innate. Marjo herself has had an innate fire for the beauty industry. However, she only graduated as a cosmetologist at the age of 30. The reason is somewhat surprising: Marjo’s good school record.
– With a grade point average of over nine, everyone encouraged me to enter the world of higher education, so that my talents wouldn’t go to waste, so to speak. I desperately scoured university brochures for something that interested me. I applied to the University of Helsinki to read chemistry and was accepted straight away. I dropped out after six months when I realised it wasn’t my thing at all.
A career as an academic seemed so wrong that Marjo’s next career was driving a bus – and she did it for five years. Chatting to customers during treatments, this period in Marjo’s history surprises everyone, but she herself considers driving a bus the best possible practical training in customer service.
– When one busy Helsinki resident after another gets on board, tapping his or her watch and complaining that the bus is late, it takes a special kind of service to be able to smile and wish everyone a good morning,” Marjo laughs ruefully.
Yes, Marjo’s laughter. It’s a familiar and safe voice for many Fenix customers. Sometimes it can carry muffled through the air conditioning ducts to other rooms, but so far no one has been bothered by it. Perhaps that’s because it’s something really real.
Customer work that empowers the entrepreneur
So a certain kind of respectability is a big part of the Fenix thing. While the wonderful pampering treatments are certainly made in comfortable surroundings, they are served with a certain unpretentiousness. Perhaps that’s why Fenix’s clientele is full of men who rarely want just a ‘splash’, as Marjo describes a treatment done just for the thrill of it.
– I remember how at school I was guided into a serene and harmonious world where a beautician would be happy to vanish in thin air. I studied it for a while, but it just didn’t suit me. I prefer to be my authentic self and that’s what I want from others. Clients come to us and they appreciate the way we work.
Marjo’s way of working also includes a certain “crack, cut and stack” mentality. She wants to get things done quickly and with visible results. That’s what many Fenix clients are looking for: hair removal with sugaring, quick and effective facials, eyelash and eyebrow highlights to brighten up their everyday look. Marjo continues to provide these treatments to her clients as part of the entrepreneur’s varied daily routine.
– Customer work always puts me in a terribly good mood. I’ve often been asked when Mrs CEO will move into a purely managerial role. Never! Administrative work can be hard and stressful, so it’s wonderful to be able to therapise myself with clients,” says Marjo, once again to laughter.
There is plenty of administrative work at Fenix, as the company has grown from forty square metres in Matinkylä. For the first three years, Marjo long with her mother Heidi worked alone, but then the books started to fill up with appointments too far into the future. An additional 60 square metres were added next door and the services of nail technicians and masseurs were added. In 2011, the business expanded to Kauniainen, where they found a space that felt like their own.
Five years later, the entrepreneur’s intuition drew her to Helsinki. Marjo boldly decided to expand right into the heart of the city.
Finland’s first Master of Beauty and Esthetics
In spring 2019, Marjo’s life took the second biggest step after her baby year when Fenix moved into the premises in Lauttasaari that Marjo had wanted to renovate from floor to ceiling.
– My husband thought I was crazy for getting a business space that was in such a terrible state. But I immediately saw the potential of the space with its old arched windows. It was an insane amount of work, but to this day I still daily thank myself for taking that crazy step. The beauty centre was now exactly what I’ve always wanted it to be.
Her husband was also concerned about the entrepreneur’s ability to cope with everyday life because Marjo was once again also sitting on a school bench. In 2018, when an email came in with an offer for a Master’s degree in Beauty and Esthetics, the first time it had ever been offered, Marjo herself thought, “No way. It would be wise to kill this idea right from the start.”
In the end, however, he secretly applied to the Masters Programme and took the exams with the idea that she would definitely not be selected. Yes. Sure.
The Masters degree was extremely demanding. Many students took time off from their jobs, but still only five of the 29 who started the course graduated on time. One of them was Marjo Fischer. Marjo describes herself as a somewhat stubborn achiever who leaves nothing to chance. She didn’t want to take a single day off, both for her studies and for the opening of the new office, even though it was sometimes very tough.
If a year later life hadn’t offered something even tougher, spring 2019 would have been the toughest period of Marjo’s career.
Moving forward on the family’s terms
In March 2020, I was faced with a situation for which none of the training I had received had prepared me. Overnight, 80% of appointments disappeared from the calendar. This was the case for all the other companies in the sector. The Covid-19 pandemic had reached Finland.
– With round eyes, I stared at the empty appontment calendar and reassured our beauticians. I promised that Fenix would not be defeated by the pandemic. After all, I’d already been through a lot of rough patches as an entrepreneur. Instead of being paralysed by the difficulties, they only gave me a real fighting spirit.
Marjo’s promise to her employees was tough, but justified. While the actions of a fast-paced entrepreneur may seem like quick turns, Marjo always thinks through big decisions carefully. The path to growth has always been without borrowing money. The money for investments has had to be raised before decisions are made.
Although Marjo has also found the ability to rest and recuperate in her hectic daily life, she recognises the need for renewal in a three-year cycle. That’s how long she usually manages to stay put, but then she needs a new challenge to motivate her forward.
There must be financial security in what you do, if only for the sake of your daughter. Marjo doesn’t want to bequeath to her child a business where the mother has spent her whole life on the edge of poverty and exhaustion. Unfortunately, that’s what entrepreneurship in Finland can mean.
– Fenix is a family business that has started from my mother’s hairdressing business, who has now retired, but I don’t want to put pressure on my daughter. She makes her own life choices. If in time she doesn’t want to continue in the business, a successor to a good business will surely be found elsewhere.
To Marjo’s delight, her teenage daughter has already taken the initiative to ask what it takes to be an entrepreneur. In Fenix’s case, the ability to put up with a mother who will hardly ever be able to fully develop her entrepreneurial skin, even in retirement, should be added to the list of requirements.
– “I can well imagine how decades from now my daughter will sigh and wonder if that emerita will come here with her stick again,” Marjo laughs once again with glee.
Then Marjo gets serious. At Fenix, of course, decisions are always made with the customer in mind. What’s best for the customers is also best for the company. Right now, this vibrant entrepreneur has plenty to offer for years to come.
text by Terhi Kangas, Toteuttamo Verbaali
photos by Suvi Sievilä, Suvi Sievilä Photo / Grafia
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