Julie Vargas, vice president of career opportunity & talent engagement at Sport Clips Haircuts, grew up in a “little bitty” town in West Texas, and didn’t begin thinking about a career in the beauty industry until her high school launched a cosmetology program. “Going into my senior year, that could be one of my electives – and I chose it,” she recalls. “My friends and I thought, ‘Cosmetology; are you kidding? That’s going to be so much fun.”
That sense of fun has defined Julie’s approach to her entire career. It also helped power her journey to the top of Sport Clips, the nation’s leading men’s and boys’ hair care provider and the only one with locations in all 50 states and parts of Canada. And it is a sentiment that motivates each of the thousands of team members who her team hires, trains, and mentors throughout their time at the company.
An Employee From Day One
During the five years she spent working for another hair salon in her early 20s, Julie says she “learned so much really, because coming right out of beauty school there’s just so much you don’t know. They really taught me how to be good at what I do: cutting hair, managing stores.”
But one day, during a manager’s meeting, one of the company’s leaders told the team that they were all replaceable – and not to forget that. “I was 23 years old, and I thought to myself, ‘Do I want to work for somebody like this?’” remembers Julie. “Look at how this affects everybody in the organization. I don’t know that I want to be affiliated with this.”
Luckily, one of her colleagues had seen an ad in the local newspaper advertising a new concept called Sport Clips. She called, got an interview, and was about to be hired on the spot – until she started discussing her salary demands. Salaries at the newly formed company were lower than its competitors, but the hiring manager called Gordon Logan, founder and chairman, and said, “I really want to hire this girl, but she needs more money. And she’s worth it.” Logan agreed immediately, “and that’s where it all started. In June of 1993, I opened the first Sport Clips store in Austin, Texas.”
At the time, Sport Clips was an independent salon, so Julie began attending conventions in preparation for the company’s expansion into franchising. “It just grew from there. Once we started franchising, all of a sudden, I went from being a manager to a technical coach, then an area coach, then a regional coach.” In that role, Julie traveled across the country opening new locations.
“Before I knew it, I was on this career path that no one dictated or said, ‘here’s what’s gonna happen.’ It just happened over the years.” And then one day, the COO told Julie it was time to start focusing, in a systematic way, on the company’s recruiting and technical efforts. “He realized that, moving forward, we needed to have solid systems in place to support the company’s huge growth and sustainability” – and that all started with talent.
Embodying the Sport Clips Brand
As Sport Clips expanded, it was hyper-vigilant about maintaining a consistent, compassionate brand not just in its Texas headquarters, but across every single franchise location. “The one thing our founder wanted to avoid was losing our brand identity.” He had seen other companies sacrifice their standards to grow, but Gordon, “worked so hard on creating a solid foundation: our core structure, our values, and our operating standards. He knew that, over time, our key differentiator would be our training program and the fact that we held everyone at the organization accountable.”
“That operating standard model is something we don’t falter from,” Julie explains. “Our operating standards are still what they were when we started, so that’s been a real difference maker for us.”
And, as always, Julie continued visiting stores to instill the company ethos and make sure everyone was maintaining the high standards Sport Clips prided itself on from the beginning. “We call them success checks – where we look at how well the stylists are doing according to our operating standards, how well they’re executing in the stores, and how those stores are performing.”
Recruiting Talent for the Long Term
Recruiting was another key piece of the puzzle. “We’ve always surrounded ourselves with really brilliant people,” says Julie. “Franchise businesses all experience ups and downs. But if you lose sight of the people, and what is needed to move you forward, you’ll really struggle.” For many years, Julie operated as a team of one. “We didn’t really have a big recruiting budget until a few years ago, but now our franchisees pay into a combined talent budget so that we’re able to do so much more.”
Sport Clips now has a sourcing team that doesn’t just post jobs and identify candidates, but also focuses on brand awareness and messaging at every touchpoint. “We’re the face of Sport Clips that people get to recognize through our Artistic Team, which is a selected group of platform stylists. And our Ambassador Teams visit beauty schools to lead presentations and bridge that gap between education, certification, and a career.”
Julie’s mandate also includes coaching, which (like everything else at Sport Clips) has massively expanded over the last decade. “We now have just under 100 coaches out in the field providing education and training to make sure that stores are staying up to speed, and that team members are trained and confident when they get on the floor.”
Where other organizations are cutting back – especially in the wake of COVID – Sport Clips is adding. “We are committed to the success and the excellence in our stores,” states Julie. “There was such uncertainty [during COVID], but we adapted and did so well while the rest of the industry was quiet. We were hosting digital classes, working with our suppliers.” Those lessons in a virtual environment were valuable, but as stylists began coming back to stores, Sport Clips held to its core system: a belief in the value of in-person training. “We really worked hard to bring back that component and be committed to ramping our training back up,” Julie explains. “Whereas we’ve seen that our competitors are doing just the opposite. They’re gonna stay virtual. And they’ve cut a lot of costs going that route, but we’ve been committed from the beginning because we know training is what got us where we are.”
That training program is a key value proposition the company offers to stylists. “It affords people the opportunity to grow a lot more than they were even while finishing school,” Julie says. “As we look at the growth and trajectory of the company, Sport Clips is still very alive and vital. Our career paths are expanding, and we’re still opening stores and will continue to do so.”
The opportunities are endless. “We need people: we need stylists, we need ambassadors, and we need managers. That growth opportunity is still there where a lot of people are cutting back. And I think that’s a real differentiator for us right now.”
At the end of the day, the company doesn’t just care about profits; it cares about leading the industry and developing the next generation of leaders. “I think if you were to ask anybody in this organization why they are here, and why they continue to be here, it’s for the people. I am here because I feel like this is my family. You know, it all started with the man who started the dream. And that was Mr. Gordon Logan, who I look at as a second father figure to me. I gave him all my trust, and he created something that I’m so proud to be a part of. And I never take that for granted.”
