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It’s Hair and Heart at Entourage Salon

Jun 20, 2022 12:21PM ● By Steve Sears

The Entourage Salon team

When you first meet Entourage Salon owner Amy Murphy and her staff, you know from the get go that a visit to her salon won’t be your last. And it’s not only because of the lovely hairstyle you’ll leave with, or your gorgeous manicured nails displayed while gripping the steering wheel as you leave the parking lot.

Amy Murphy

 It’s Murphy and her friendliness which embodies her entire 24-member team, 18 of whom are stylists. Not only do you get results and affordability here, but Entourage Salon also delivers friendship, nice, enjoyable conversation, and love.

There’s a comment made by a first-time customer that has stuck with Murphy, and it certainly bears repeating. “She said, ‘You guys really love each other here. You don't just like each other, you honestly love each other like a family.’” It’s that atmosphere that envelopes her Flanders location. “We really are a family, and I think that the clients feel like they're also part of our family when they're coming in. They're not just somebody walking in the door, and we're not just giving them a haircut. We're giving them more than that, and we're welcoming them into our family. We’re welcoming them into our lives.”

Murphy is a member of Intercoiffure Mondial, a prestigious salon owner organization of the best “of the best” salons in the United States and Canada. She first worked in a few salons before opening one in her Wharton home prior to purchasing Entourage Salon in 2014. Along the way, she has encountered obstacles, which perhaps she in her good nature would call hiccups. Entourage Salon made it through COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, endured a car driving into their front window in 2019, and she herself was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2010. Still, she marches on. “I’m that kind of person,” she says. “I don't just turn lemons into lemonade; I have a party. It doesn't shake me; I just roll with it.”

Murphy, who grew up in Whippany and graduated from Whippany Park High School, studied hairstyling at the Morris County Vocational and Technical School in Denville. That education, as well as the experience gained working at other locations, taught her much about the hairstyling side of things. However, perhaps her early home salon venture taught her something more valuable. “That taught me everything about all the things that nobody thinks about when they run a business,” Murphy says. “You think you just want to do hair, and owning a hair salon has very little to do with doing hair. It's so much else. I learned about taxes, about buying products, about inventory levels, about marketing - all that kind of stuff that they don't teach you in school that I didn't know but I learned it on a smaller scale, when it was just me, when I didn't have anybody else's life in my hands.”

Last summer, things started to get crowded at Entourage Salon. “In August, our lease was going to be up, so I had to make a decision. I asked myself, ‘Do I want to stay here, or do I want to move someplace else?’ When we ran out of space in the old place, we had been coming into the salon saying, ‘We need a bigger salon,’ ‘We need a bigger salon,’ and we were saying that for quite some time,” Murphy recalls. When the opportunity presented itself in September of 2021, Murphy expanded the business – but she didn’t have to go far. Only a few doors down. “We went from 2,000 square feet to 5,000 square feet.  We were only going to go to 3,000 square feet - that's all that we asked for. But the landlord came back and said, ‘We’ll give you a good deal if you take the whole 5,000 square feet in Lane Bryant (which was vacant).” Move made, and Murphy couldn’t be happier, considering that routes 46, 206, 80 (and even routes 10, 15 and 181) are nearby. “Really,” she says, “there was no better option. I really enjoy being here. I love the location. I love the visibility that we get. Everybody knows where we are.”

 Entourage Salon, which also offers onsite boutique gifts, coins itself a “teaching salon,” the growth, education, and development of its staff very important and transparent. Murphy explains. “We feel like you're never done learning. If you're done learning, you're done. There's always something to learn, there's always a way to grow, there's always learning different ways of doing things, new techniques. We have classes on all different aspects of hair: hair cutting, hair coloring, and new products. We just had a perm class, and we’re bringing a new product in for a new treatment we offer. We also have classes on communication. We had an excellent speaker named Jay Williams, who came and did a whole class on communication: classes on social media and marketing, and how the individual stylists can help to grow their business as well. We're growing people, too.”

Entourage Salon is truly a family salon, and it caters to all ages. “Our point of difference is just that we can appeal to a broad range of people,” Murphy says. ‘We don't just do one thing, and we don't just specialize in one thing. All of our stylists are very different, and they have different specialties. When you call and you make an appointment, we can really get you matched up with a stylist who's going to be best for you, who's going to make sure that you're in good hands, and that you're going to get the best service.”

In addition to welcoming folks into Entourage Salon, Murphy and her team also get out into the community by supporting it, donating to local Tricky Trays and sports teams, and many more fundraisers. Murphy’s reasoning is simple. “The township of Mount Olive has been so good to us, just with anything we've needed. They've been so awesome to us, so it's good to be able to give back and thank them.”

Entourage Salon is located at 30 International Drive South in Flanders. Visit www.entouragesalonnj.com.