Patrick and Erin Elgin, the largest salon suite operators in Minnesota, are pleased to announce their successful acquisition of the Sola Salons location in Maple Grove. Sola Salons provides a turn-key environment for beauty professionals to operate their own businesses, without the risk and overhead of opening a traditional salon. This location will be their 14th salon operated in the Twin Cities metro, and they currently support over 600 local beauty professionals.
Patrick and Erin Elgin joined Sola Salons as local franchisees when they formed their company, Little North Fork, LLC in 2012. Since then, they’ve built ten salons and purchased an additional four salons. With this acquisition, the Elgin’s have reached the significant milestone of owning all Sola Salons locations in the Twin Cities metro area.
But things haven’t always been smooth sailing. In the spring of 2020, the COVID lockdowns shuttered their locations for 11 weeks. The subsequent government relief programs were only able to recoup about 15% of the losses they sustained during that time. Despite this, the Elgin’s were the first rental salon owners in the Twin Cities to support their salon professionals by announcing that all rents due from tenants would be waived during the entirety of the shutdown, a position some other local salons later emulated. They then led the lobbying charge on expanding the scope of unemployment benefits to independent beauty professionals, to help them make ends meet while they weren’t allowed to work.
Since salons reopened in June 2020, the Elgin’s have rapidly expanded. In a little over three years, they have opened three new locations in the Twin Cities, expanded their Eden Prairie location (making it the largest Sola Salons location in the country), and purchased an additional four locations.
Erin has a unique take on what motivates her: “I wake up every day and feel so lucky: we get to provide local beauty professionals with an opportunity to become business owners in a low-risk way. For many of our Sola pros, they’ve never had more freedom to control their schedule or more flexibility to create their ideal work environment than with Sola. On top of that, most of them are making more money! We love growing our presence so we can offer this opportunity to as many local beauty professionals as possible. We focus on them and their success first.” Patrick then elaborated: “There’s no doubt in my mind that the package we offer is the best rental option out there. We put our beauty professionals first, and that means offering great rental rates with fair “easy-out” contract terms, having first-class facilities, providing an un-paralleled support staff, and always being responsive to their needs. Our values are what drive our success.”
ABOUT SOLA SALONS
Sola Salons was established in Denver in 2004 and now operates over 685 salons in the U.S. and Canada, supporting over 20,000 independent Beauty Professionals. Sola’s turnkey studios are private locking spaces for each Beauty Pro that include cabinetry, sinks, chairs, thermostats, and numerous other amenities to support Beauty Pro’s launching their own business with minimal cost. For more information, please visit www.solasalons.com.
ABOUT LITTLE NORTH FORK, LLC
The Little North Fork family of companies was formed in 2012 by Patrick and Erin Elgin to develop additional Sola Salons locations in the Twin Cities area. Sola has granted the company exclusive development rights to the metro area and the Elgin’s continue to plan for future growth and expansion of additional locations. In addition to operating 14 salons, the company also owns five local buildings, with a total of over 50,000 leasable square feet.
Contact Bre Waters, Chief People Officer at Bre@sola-twincities.com
