Top of the Crops

Top of the crops! Joy for Daren and Kate as Lotus Styling gets best salon vote!

Delighted Lotus Styling owners, Daren and Kate Terry have paid tribute to their loyal staff and clients after scooping the Observer Salon of the Year Award. It is particularly fitting given that they are celebrating entering 30 years of business in the town.

The husband-and-wife team, who oversee the thriving hair salon in Aldwick Road, Bognor Regis, say they are grateful to those who took time to vote for the business in the awards and take a great deal of pride in the honour.

Daren, who has worked as a consultant for Braun in London and appeared at Salon international said,

Both Kate and I would like to thank everybody who voted for us, it really is hugely appreciated! We believe this is what comes from having a great team, education and making all of our clients’ look and feel gorgeous. Thank you to all our clients for their continued loyalty and support.

Kate says,

There is so much to back up the decision to hand, Lotus Styling is an eco-friendly salon and winning the award is a real honour. The evidence supporting our award is overwhelming. We are very proud of both our excellent client and staff retention record, Keir 26 years, Louise 22 years and Nicky 12 years.

We're a team of 12 and we're like family. As well as long-serving team members we have hugely promising younger staff members, too. Our stylist Georgie has recently completed a Master Colourist course at the Goldwell Academy in London, and our stylist Rhiannon was a finalist in the National Hairdressers Federation Future Generations category and won a day with four-times British Hairdresser of the Year, Akin Konizi.

There are lots to be excited about. We have recently been awarded five stars by the Good Salon Guide and also recognised as a Colour Expert salon, so we are delighted to have achieved independent recognition of the salon's standards.

Daren has hit the headlines over the years for his fantastic hair creations as well as his artistic take on all things hair, and that includes the creative window displays so well known to the townsfolk. His ghd Tree (a unique Christmas tree completely out of ghd stylers) went viral on the internet, and he was in the news when he shaved England World Cup, Harry Kane into the back of a client's head which was then featured on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid.

Surveying the 30 years since the salon was transformed from an old butcher’s shop in 2004, we have been told that our salon is like something from the West End and we always wanted to bring this to Sussex. We pride ourselves on our customer service and take heart from the fact that we have won the Phorest Client Experience Award for the last three years.

Charity fundraising has been key to the ethos of the business from day one. The efforts have attracted rich praise over the years and probably peaked in a 26-hour Cutathon when Daren cut hair non-stop for 26 hours and is now a world record holder. All proceeds went to CRY, CLIC Sargent and Chestnut Tree House.

We have helped the Bognor Regis Food bank, Prostate Cancer UK (£1,100 raised), Breast Cancer Now (£1,200 raised) and we are super proud of being awarded the top fundraiser of the ghd Pink Campaign. We were also quoted by the charity as having donated the most amount of hair in the UK to the Little Princess Trust, with 1,074 inches of hair collected, providing 15 wigs for children who have lost hair through cancer or other illnesses. We’re happy to help and we’re happy to be winners, too!