Celebrating the women-owned businesses in Oceanside

Ninety-eight years have passed since women gained the right to vote in the United States. The decades-long fight for the recognition ended with the 19th Amendment becoming part of the U.S. Constitution, but for women — who make up a little more than half of the country’s population — the battle for equality was just beginning.
Part of the fight involves gender parity in business, and in the decades since, the number of women-owned businesses has steadily risen. According to census data, between 2007 and 2012, the most recent survey data on the topic, the number of women-owned businesses jumped from 7.8 million to 9.9 million nationwide. The number in Nassau County, in the same time period, grew from roughly 43,000 to more than 48,000.
“Running a business is a lot of hard work,” said Maria Heller, a former Oceanside Chamber of Commerce president, and a specialist for more than 20 years in printing, marketing and public relations. “You have to keep going every day.”
As Women’s History Month ends, the Herald is spotlighting three female business owners in Oceanside as they discuss the challenges of running a business in 2018.

A colorist for the ages
When Ronnie Thomas — a hair colorist and the owner of Salon Montáage on Long Beach Road — sat down for an interview, a client walked up to her, and shook her new blond streaks. “Love,” she remarked simply, “you’re the best,” and walked away.
On that March day, the salon was bustling with women, including one of Thomas’s first customers, who identified herself only as Joan M., of Hewlett. “She was so proficient,” Joan recalled of their first encounter nearly 50 years ago. Thomas, now 63, was a teenager at the time and an assistant at Hair Machine, a salon in Rockville Centre. Joan had been assigned to her due to a high volume of customers. “She was as good as anyone else in the salon,” Joan said.
Joan requested Thomas every time she returned, and today Thomas remains her hair colorist of choice. “She’s the best in the area by far for a colorist,” she said.
Thomas remained at Hair Machine for 18 years. After her son went to college — and nearly two decades of cultivating her clients in the chair — she decided it was time to open a shop of her own.
She opened Salon Montaage in 1995, two storefronts down from where it sits today. “It’s more than a full-time job,” she said of managing her own business, but added that after learning all she could at Hair Machine, it was time for a new challenge. “Everyone wants that American Dream,” Thomas said, adding that she hopes the same for all of her stylists.
“It’s sad when they go, but it’s normal,” she said. “It’s the way it is.”
While managing a salon in 2018 comes with its own set of challenges — like constantly changing styles — running a business as a woman can also pose its own set of obstacles.
“Business-wise women typically haven’t really been taken as seriously,” Thomas explained. “When you have a little salon, people will say, OK, but when you want to take it to another level, there’s a bit of a stigma.”
Salon Montaage has moved and expanded to occupy two storefronts since its opening, and Thomas said that people will occasionally walk in and say, “Wait, Ronnie’s a woman?”
But she acknowledged that in recent years, women have gained a more equal footing in the workplace. “It’s getting much better,” she said. “I’m glad to see it changing.”

Joining the circus
Fresh off the fifth anniversary of the founding of her online marketing firm, 29-year-old Jillian Weston, of Jillian’s Circus, sat behind her desk in a dim office.
“It used to be a yoga studio at some point,” she said. Her staff of eight was gone for the day, and Weston was preparing to attend a Best of L.I. networking event that night. Opportunities to meet with other business owners, she said, are her bread and butter.
“I always like to say I’m the coach, not the player,” Weston said while explaining her inspiration for Jillian’s Circus.
The Oceanside native studied hospitality and event planning at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, and after graduating started working part-time at a Rockville Centre hotel. She soon discovered that it lacked any sort of online marketing, and by creating a web presence, she said, “I showed them I could get them business.”
Management made her the marketing director for the hotel. Weston also began managing the online marketing of other businesses and hiring staff on the side, founding Jillian’s Circus.
“Every year we were doubling our business,” she said, and she began to spend less time at the hotel. Finally, two years ago, she decided that Jillian’s Circus “needed my full attention.”
The appeal of her job, Weston said, is the satisfaction of watching another business thrive thanks to her efforts. As a business owner herself, she said, she is painfully aware of the expenses involved. “You’d be amazed at how many businesses are just surviving,” she said, adding that her services have the benefit of improving the local economy.
Weston said she has so far avoided the stigma associated with being a female entrepreneur, but as a serial networker who interacts with male business contacts on a regular basis, she is occasionally met with unsolicited advances. “I just laugh and change the subject,” she said of those cases, because a confrontation could result in awkward an situation down the line.
But she said she is unfazed by it, because events at other chambers of commerce, and other networking opportunities are positive, “Working with other business owners has taught me so much,” she said.

A sweet start
When Jackie Brown and her husband, Michael, purchased Emile’s Candies from its owner, Patrick Quinn, last November, it was the fulfillment of a dream. “I had always thought in the back of my mind, ‘What if I owned Emile’s?’” Brown said.
Brown, 51, had grown up frequenting the chocolate shop that since 1953 has stood on Merrick Road in Oceanside. While studying design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she got her start in the confectionery business, working in Manhattan for the Swiss-based luxury chocolatier Teuscher before leaving to work in sales at a children’s clothing firm and moving on to start a career in real estate sales.
While she had no grand plan, Brown said, between managing high-end clientele, sales, inventory, preparing recipes and presentation design, all of her business experience up until now has prepared her for running the shop. But it wasn’t until late 2016, when she heard through a friend that Quinn wanted to sell, that the opportunity to own Emile’s presented itself.
Last week, Brown was in the midst of her first Easter season at the shop. She stood in Emile’s packing room, which was lined from floor to ceiling with metal crates — original to the shop — designed to keep the chocolates cool during storage, along with a roughly four-foot-tall, 30-pound chocolate bunny dubbed Henrietta.
While the chocolate recipes — originally created by the shop’s namesake and founder, German confectioner Emile Wageknecht — have not changed, Brown said that the challenges of running Emile’s involve treading a fine line between upgrading the store’s physical space and putting her personal stamp on candy packaging while preserving what customers have always loved about Emile’s. At times, she said, she and her husband are at the shop from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m., brainstorming and managing inventory. “I guess it takes an A-type personality,” she said.
As a woman in business, Brown said she rarely saw challenges that she felt were reserved exclusively for the realm of men, adding, “I’m comfortable in a pair of pants.”