On Friday Feb. 4, the Dawson County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting for North Georgia Haircutters and Essence Massage Therapy, both of which are located off of Burnt Stand Road in Lumpkin County.
North Georgia Haircutters is a salon that has been in the community for about 14 years and offers haircuts for men, women and children, hair styling, hair coloring and highlighting, perms and smoothing treatments, and spa services including waxing, nails and makeup services. The business has been located in its current building, which was custom designed by business owner Vikki Condrey, for almost two years.
Essence Massage Therapy is a massage studio located in the same building which offers deep tissue massage, relaxation massage, therapeutic massage and other massage services.
The building also includes an event room which can be rented out, and North Georgia Haircutters often hosts community events and participates in outreach in order to support the local community.
Condrey spoke during the ribbon cutting ceremony, saying that her business currently stays very busy and that she is always looking for ways to grow her business and serve the community at the same time.
“I have two stylists that work with me and I have an assistant that is going to be licensed in the summer, so we stay very busy,” Condrey said. “We host events here all year round — we have Christmas parties and Easter parties; it’s just for kids around the community.”
Essence Massage Therapy owner Katherine Burnett said that she worked as a licensed nurse for 30 years, but that she came to a time in her life where she was seeing medications given to patients more than she thought they should be. She found out how important massage is to the human body, and soon thereafter she decided to go back to school and start her own massage therapy business.
“Not taking away from doctors or nurses at all, but I just found that massage is so important to the human body and I can do that naturally instead of shoving a pill in your hand and saying take this’ll make you feel better,” Burnett said. “I got married two years ago and he told me I could take some time off cause I was really disheartened with nursing; and I felt like God just put it in my heart that because I love to take care of people so much and I feel very passionate about helping people, so I went to school and here I am still taking care of people.”
Dawson County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Mandy Power also spoke during the ribbon cutting ceremony, saying how happy she and the rest of the chamber are to welcome the two businesses into their “chamber family”.
“I think it’s awesome you can come to one building and spend all day here getting so much done,” Power said during the ceremony. “We are so happy to have you ladies in the Dawson County Chamber — we want to see small businesses do well and succeed, and we want to do everything we can to help with that.”
North Georgia Haircutters and Essence Massage Therapy are located at 2375 Burnt Stand Road in Lumpkin County. For more information about North Georgia Haircutters, go to https://www.northgeorgiahaircutters.com/, and for more information about Essence Massage Therapy, go to https://www.northgamassagetherapy.com/.