In Japanese, “kintsukuri” means to take something broken and fill it with gold.

Susan Sakara, owner of Lipstick Jungle in Niles, believes the cosmetology industry is broken for a number of reasons. After hiring a number of beauticians unprepared for the business, the business owner decided to take a closer look at the problem in order to find a solution.

After many months of research and hard work, Sakara believes she has found a fix; this fall, she will open a new cosmetology school in downtown Niles.

“For us, Kintsukuri is taking the whole cosmetology school as a whole, that is broken in my opinion, and educating [cosmetology] students with an advanced curriculum, which is the gold, and then licensing those students to make them more valuable as professionals,” Sakara said.

In Michigan, the majority of cosmetologists work on a booth rental basis, meaning the owner of the business sells them a chair, and it is up to the cosmetologist to run his or her business in the space. Unfortunately, Sakara said most cosmetology schools do not prepare students for this aspect of the profession.

“I’ve spent several years hiring stylists and going to the schools and bringing new stylists in, and they were not trained,” Sakara said. “We had to teach them how to build a clientele, we had to teach them about the market, all of those things, and once they got to the point that they had a clientele and an income, they want to go out and work on their own.”

The business owner, who spent a decade opening large resorts and training staffs to work in them, decided it was time to invest her talents in the next generation of stylists.

After moving the main location of Lipstick Jungle to the front corner of the building, Sakara has expanded the business to the majority of the main floor of the former Four Flags Motel. Sakara has set up two practical classrooms where students will learn the skills necessary for their program, and one technical classroom with televisions, where students will learn the written material. The back portion of the building, which most recently housed Lipstick Jungle, will now serve as the clinic floor, where students will offer services once they reach that level of their programs.

The Kintsukuri school will offer four programs: one for hair stylists, one for aestheticians, one for nail technicians and one for instructors.

Sakara, who is not currently certified as an instructor, will go through the instructor program and experience the school alongside the new students.

“I think that’s going to be another advantage in being able to really tweak what we do by actually going through the day-by-day process,” Sakara said.

While developing the school, Sakara thought a lot about how she could make the programs offered more efficient and affordable for students while still offering an advanced education.

Included in tuition (which Sakara said will be less than $20,000), students will receive an iPad containing all of the learning material, so they will not have to purchase books. Later in the program, a representative will fit students for their materials, so students will not have to purchase tools such as sheers or clippers.

“One of the things that they’re going to do as they graduate to the clinic floor is they will have a business, and they will create their own business model,” Sakara said. “They’ll be given rent and utilities and all the expense information, and they’ll have to take all the services that they do and figure out how to run a business.”

Sakara hopes this will prepare students for the next phase of their careers once they leave school.

“When outside clients come and have services done by students, the services of course are going to be very low cost,” she said. “I think that will pull people that are maybe going other places, and what I want to do is to help these people establish a clientele so when those people leave here, they will have made those relationships and be able to take some people with them. There’s more than enough business here for everybody.”

Current customers of Lipstick Jungle will still be able to keep their current stylists and aestheticians, and services will be offered the same as usual.

Sakara hopes by opening the facility, she will be able to not only improve the skill level of the cosmetologists entering the industry, but also the overall reputation of the industry

as a whole.

“For many, many people I have dealt with, their parents don’t want them to go into the cosmetology industry because it has a bad image,” Sakara said, adding that most end up attending college and quitting, then attending cosmetology school.

“My concept is to bring that image up, to really educate people on the fact that cosmetologists — it takes a talent to do what they do,” she said. “I feel I can do that.”

Sakara is invested in the future of the industry she has spent the majority of her life in, and with some hard work and dedicated professionals, she thinks she can fill it with gold.