As she hauled her children to ballet and chess classes, New Yorker Pam Wolf grew frustrated by the bleak settings for such activities. “They were all in basements, not clean, not friendly, so I wondered why wasn’t anyone making this a hospitality-driven product,” she says.
That’s what led Wolf, who previously ran an executive recruitment firm, to launch the NY Kids Club in 2001, an enrichment center with a preschool and a variety of classes under one roof. After sprouting 18 locations over 15 years, Wolf sold the majority of the company.
Her next entrepreneurial move would be sparked by a visit to a suite of independent beauty professionals. She expected a lively community, but what she got was an air of mystery and seclusion. “[I didn’t know] who was inside or what was happening,” she says. Seeing an opportunity, Wolf conceptualized the Parlor, her spin on the new wave of salons.
Debuting this spring in New York’s Midtown South neighborhood, the Parlor will be a membership-based, Soho House-like community that unites everyday hair and makeup services with wellness offerings that include integrative medicine, cryotherapy, and nutritional and life coaching from highly vetted stylists, aestheticians, and therapists. An inviting communal area encourages collaboration between colleagues and offers a place for customers to linger post-treatment. The large, cement space with 28-foot-high ceilings was outfitted by Brooklyn-based architecture and design studio Combined, which will create suites with peaked roofs reminiscent of soothing cabins for each practitioner. “The whole premise of combining beauty and wellness is because beauty really is inside and out,” she points out. “We feel better when we look better. That total package is something people take more seriously now.” In other words, the Parlor plans to be no average salon.
