Kord & Kash Brown: Arcs Salon

The front door opens to reveal a large room with white walls and music pulsing with a beat designed to keep you energized and engaged. You suddenly find yourself lost amidst a sea of super trendy hipsters clad in all black. They all have smiles, and genuinely seem to love what they’re doing. Lost in this flurry of activity, it is difficult to remember that you’re not in the latest Brookside hotspot, not getting ready to be seated at one of the newest minimalist restaurants, and not lost in some parallel, ultra cool LA dimension. No, this is a different kind of escape. This is a hair salon. Welcome to ARCS.

When brothers Kord and Kash Brown started studying cosmetology in 1999, their motivation was vastly different from the average stylist. “Our parents had a salon for like 35 years but neither one of us wanted to do hair,” says 32 year old Kord. “I was doing construction and landscaping at the time and they’d been on (us) for a while to go back to school and do something but I was like ‘you guys are crazy.’ The next day I went to work and it was like 120 degrees outside in the middle of August. So we went and checked out the Paul Mitchell Academy and it ended up being three boys and like 250 girls so I said, ‘sign me up!’”

 

His brother Kash, 28, reports a similar story. After trying school for a year and not really taking to it, he ended up laying carpet. The same week his brother had his heat induced epiphany, he found himself carrying carpet rolls around in 100+ degrees weather and he too began to heed his parents’ advice. So, they packed up their stuff and moved out to what at the time was the only Paul Mitchell academy in the world, located in Provo, Utah. “That was kind of a wild experience,” Kord says with a laugh.

 

Over the next few years it would seem as if fortune favored them. They won a contest that enabled them to participate in a hair show with famed stylist Robert Cromeans and got to apply their construction skills to the building of his new flagship salon in San Diego. Their mother, Soundra, remembers them showing up at the San Diego salon with their suitcases, ready to work. Kord says, “We literally called him (Robert) every week saying, ‘Hey can we work for you?’ It was more persistence than anything else.” That persistence paid off.

 

After their father was diagnosed with lung cancer, Kord and Kash returned home to be with their family. Robert decided to come with them and loved Tulsa. He made a deal with their dad to convert his salon, Mr. Kenneth and Co., into ARCS (located near 71st and Memorial, next to Barnes and Noble) and their families have been in business ever since. “Now we’re just looking to get more,” Kash quipped.

 

The “more” he speaks of includes expansion into other markets such as Dallas and Kansas City, as well as opening up several locations and concepts in Tulsa. “There’s going to be some stuff happening,” Kash said. With the success of ARCS thus far, we can hardly wait.