Aug. 15—A new beauty spot has opened in Downtown St. Joseph where customers can get all their lash and waxing needs met.
PCH Beauty, located upstairs from Edmond Street Parlor at 609 Edmond St., is fresh to the business sphere of town. Piper Handshy is making her name as owner and sole operator of the salon.
A one-room space in the upstairs level of the Edmond Street Parlor, PCH Beauty offers a full menu of treatments from lash lifts and tints to full body waxing. Handshy has been in the esthetics business for four and a half years, working for different salons.
"I never really knew that this was what I wanted to do from a young age, I feel like a lot of estheticians say that but I was never good at makeup or anything like that starting off," Handshy said. "It actually started with special effects. I wanted to do special effects, and go to California and do all these fun things. I found out in Kansas, which is where I'm from, that you can't do makeup on somebody without a license."
This revelation led to Handshy looking into what education paths were available. She ultimately found a school, City Point Beauty Academy in Joplin, Missouri, and started taking classes in 2018. After working in Joplin and Kansas City, she relocated to St. Joseph in May.
Handshy said she was eager to create a space of her own, taking into account the good and bad she has seen in the industry.
"I've worked for so many different people and I've seen a lot of things that I would do differently, which is kind of why I want to go into having my own employees," Handshy said. "I want things to be so different in this industry, and I want it to actually work for the employees instead of against them. I can implement the procedures that I want to do and treat the customer the way that I think they should be treated."
Once she moved to town, she realized there were not a ton of locations for her to walk in and get a job, so she decided this was the perfect time to start her own business. She called around to several different locations until she heard back from the owner of Edmond Street Parlor. Handshy said she liked the space, the décor, the vibe — and decided to take the chance on it.
"I would love to have within the next two years have our own storefront, have a full-service spa," Handshy said. "So with that, I would do of course the lash extensions like I am now, the full body waxing, I would incorporate even more facials, right now I'm just doing dermaplaning as it's just me on my own. The sky is the limit at this point."