MRS Nancy Tan wanted to become a hairdresser so badly that her mother decided to let her train at the neighbourhood salon.
That was back in the early 1960s when she was an unworldly 16-year-old.
"I liked working with hair but there were no hairdressing schools in Singapore at the time," said the founder of local hairdressing chain, Kimage.
She admits that seeking training then was a bold move. "It was 1963 and young girls didn't just walk into a salon and ask for training."
More than four decades after her first tentative hair snips, Mrs Tan, 61, now surveys a hairdressing empire that recorded an impressive annual turnover of $16 million last year.
Kimage continues to grow at a healthy clip. It now has more than 200 employees to run its school and 19 salons here. A further 20 employees help run the company's latest venture in Vietnam.
The company's dramatic expansion owes much to a highly effective collaboration between Mrs Tan and her daughter, Monica, 42, which began in 1991.
But in the early days, Mrs Tan struggled to get started. She trained under a number of hairdressers before an opportunity arose in 1970 for her to take over a salon and be her own boss.
"When I finally had my own salon after seven years, I looked back and thought about why it took so long just to become a hairdresser," she said.
"I knew I wasn't stupid but I strongly believed that if I was properly trained, it could have taken just one year."
Mrs Tan's frustration prompted her to pack her bags for London to pursue more advanced hairdressing courses.
On her return, she moved her salon from the heartlands to Pearl's Centre in Chinatown - a major retail belt in Singapore during the 1970s.
A year later, she started a hairdressing school that also offered haircuts by student hairstylists for just $3.
She said: "I discovered in London that live models provided me with a better understanding of cutting hair.
"So to give my students a more realistic feel of the trade, I introduced cheap student cuts to attract people."
Her idea paid off handsomely, as both customers and students came in droves.
At the peak of her business, Mrs Tan was teaching about 90 students a year, each parting with more than $2,000 for her courses.
An impressive achievement for a woman who did not even complete school.
But she wanted more. She had read of global brand names such as fast-food chain McDonald's and dreamed of achieving similar success.
"Go to any McDonald's outlet, anywhere in the world, and its hamburgers will taste just as good. I wanted my salons to be that way, to have the same high quality and standards in every branch, but I didn't know how to do it."
The answer to that question would arrive, fortuitously, with the return to Singapore of her daughter, Monica, in 1990.
She had just graduated from the University of Utah in the United States with a degree in human resource management.
At first, Ms Tan did not want to enter the family firm. She told The Straits Times that running a business was never her first choice. Like many fresh graduates, she wanted a job at Raffles Place.
But when her mother fell ill, she offered to help. And over time, she grew interested in the business and discovered that it had a lot of untapped potential.
She used the knowledge she had gained at university to put together a plan to modernise the business.
"When Monica came to me one day and told me that my business could be developed, I was surprised but very pleased," said Mrs Tan.
Managing director of Kimage Hair Studio chain and Kimage School of Hairdressing, Monica Tan (R), 42, and her mother, Mrs Nancy Tan, 61.
Her daughter presented her with a business plan that included renovating the existing salons, "branding" the business and using information technology to enhance the efficiency of the salons.
The sting in the tail was that the plan required hundreds of thousands of dollars to execute, but Mrs Tan was unfazed.
"I think I surprised Monica by agreeing to her plan almost instantly," said Mrs Tan who was then, in her own words, "very tired" from running the business.
But her daughter's enthusiasm rubbed off on Mrs Tan and reignited her desire to take the business to another level.
From 1991, mother and daughter started working closely together to plot the renewal of the business.
"We talked only about hair and nothing else for three years," said Ms Tan.
In 1994, the new-look salon was finally born with three Kimage Hair Studios.
But one of the key challenges for the firm then was to staff its salons with hairstylists who were not only qualified, but also schooled in the Kimage way.
So in 1996, the Kimage School of Hairdressing was revived to supply the salons with hairstylists who were trained with the high standards the Tans required.
Ms Tan restructured her mother's teaching methods and implemented a more efficient system to train students.
"We started to feel the identity of Kimage steadily emerging - from the training our hairstylists received, the way we approach our customers in terms of service and the consistency in how our salons looked," said Ms Tan, who is now the firm's director.
Today, Kimage's 19 outlets include newly introduced sub-brands such as Chapter 2, a salon for youths; and another for the elderly called Belong.
And on the international front, a Kimage Hairdressing School and two Kimage salons have since surfaced in Vietnam.
Ms Tan said that despite reports of rising inflation, the expansion to Vietnam, Kimage's first foray overseas at a cost of $1 million, was worth it.
"We see a lot of potential in the Vietnamese market. The young people in Vietnam, especially from its emerging middle class, have a very high level of disposable income," said Ms Tan.
"They are also increasingly looking for trendy hairstyling services, which Kimage can provide."
Plans are under way to set up a franchise in India, where Kimage is expected to plant its largest salon network to date.
Ms Tan said franchising was the preferred business model for expansion into India as it was more cost-effective and efficient.
"Besides the near-zero set-up cost, we can also leverage on our partner's knowledge of the local culture and language," said Ms Tan.
"This will definitely help Kimage settle in faster in India," she said.
Asked whether the duo have any plans to take Kimage public, Mrs Tan was quick to reply: "Never.
"We enjoy our freedom. Growing the business was my dream but now, Monica is helping me achieve it."
Mrs Tan, now semi-retired, spends most of her mornings these days working on her 11-handicap golf game, while her daughter jetsets to internationalise Kimage.
She notes that her husband, a retiree, has always been supportive of her even though he did not have a direct role in Kimage.
But it was her trust in her daughter, who now heads Kimage, that finally gave her the confidence she needed to take a step back to enjoy other aspects of life.
Under her daughter's watchful eye, Kimage posted $16 million in revenue last year.
Ms Tan says it is on course to achieve its target of $22 million in turnover within the next three years.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Aug 13, 2008.
