Places offering “Pay What You Can” services are not unheard of in the Quad Cities, but Nicole Perkins put a new twist on it for her hairstyling business.
The perky 40-year-old Los Angeles native, who grew up in Las Vegas and went to cosmetology school there, offers that flexible payment model at Haven Beauty Collective, 1601 52nd Ave., Suite 8, Moline, near SouthPark Mall.
Marking her first anniversary at her current location Nov. 7, Haven in mid-August launched a new, community-first business model that centers on care, dignity, and accessibility. Haircuts are offered through a “Pay What You Can” pricing structure. No judgment. No explanations required. Just beauty services rooted in empathy, respect, and mutual support.
“What I’m seeing in the landscape of our world right now is incredibly hard,” Perkins said recently.
She’s heard from lots of moms who are struggling with costs of daily living, including haircuts for themselves and their kids, which help tremendously with self-confidence.
“In times of economic hardship, there’s one thing that will always remain true, and it’s that people will cut back on everything but a haircut, because it’s the base of everybody’s self-care. A haircut will always be needed.”
And she wants to make it as affordable as possible, with clients continuing to be generous.
“When the community does what the community feels called to do, there is more than enough,” Perkins said.
“My guests are wildly loyal and so, with the exception of one or two they don’t necessarily feel they align with it, everybody has been incredibly positive, and many of them have not only paid their merited rate, which is their normal haircut price, but they have paid gratuity like they normally would, then paid over and above,” she added.
NEST Café in Rock Island has a similar payment by donation model, as does Sarah Stevens, at her Sanctuary Studios in Moline.
Stevens supported her “Pay What You Can” plan, similar to how she operates her yoga studios. She told Perkins: “This is not generosity, it’s justice. And it is not charity, it’s community care.”
“I was really inspired by what Sarah was doing with the yoga studio,” Perkins said.
Stevens, who runs Sanctuary Studios at the Spotlight Theatre building in Moline, is a close friend and mentor.
“She has a heart that is deep and wide,” Perkins said. “That woman has a heart of more precious metals than I know to be true.”
The model is built on a familiar truth: just like being invited to a cookout with a friend and a dish to pass, communities thrive when everyone brings what they can, the owner said. When the community does what the community is called to do, there is enough for everyone.
As Perkins explains, “I know I can't save the world, however if this is the one thing I can offer the community I've lived in for the last 16 years—from the corner of the Quad Cities that I've carved to offer some relief—then that's what I'm going to do.”
While haircut services will be offered on a sliding scale (she has a detailed card with suggested prices and ranges for a variety of cuts), Haven will continue to provide its full range of premium color and treatment services at standard pricing. This ensures a sustainable business structure while extending access to care in an equitable and empowering way.
“It’s about more than just your haircut – it’s about truly creating community,” Perkins said. “If we don’t come together as a community and give what we have, I don’t see a way forward with the world and our country right now, in the state that it’s in. And this is what I have to give.”
Moving from out West
In opening her salon, Perkins fulfilled a dream of her mother, who died in 2012.
“I have always said, if I could believe in myself, just a fraction of the way my mom believed in me, I’d be something,” she said recently. “As a 40-year-old woman, I far more embody that now, which is why I’ve created this space and the movement in the Pay What You Can haircut model we have.”
In losing her mother, Perkins said the gravity of that “is something so deep and wide and profound. Anytime I have a colleague, or friend or client, or somebody with a similar loss, it’s a club unfortunately you hate to welcome somebody to. But it is something that only you will know and something you can relate to in a way, you have a lamppost to guide you.”
She moved from Vegas to the Quad Cities in 2009, during that recession, when her aunt and uncle allowed her to live with them rent-free (for what turned out to be 14 months). Perkins’s uncle has been here since he went to college at Western Illinois.
Their oldest son was diagnosed with pediatric cancer at age 6, and the community rallied around them. That’s the age of Perkins’s daughter now. In one day, her aunt and uncle raised $41,000 for his care, and Gabriel died 16 months later.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Perkins said of that local generosity. “When you come from another part of the country, that thrives on fast pace, service-driven dollars, and you don’t know your neighbors, it’s very much a “me, me, me” and your family is very isolated.”
“It’s so vastly different here; the culture shock was wild,” she said of the QC. “It took me a long time to figure out where I fit in here. It took me building my own business, because my pointed corners didn’t fit in anyone else’s circle.”
Those two family losses taught Perkins how to be kind, and create a safe space.
“How to receive somebody in their time of need, here in this space,” she said, noting she called her first styling brand Salon Refuge, and did a re-brand last year.
Her mom’s passing breathed life into Nicole going out on her own, after working in a salon at JC Penney at SouthPark and paying off $18,000 in school debt.
“I was working three jobs to pay off all of that, so I could walk away and have a better life for myself,” Perkins said. When her mother passed, Nicole got an inheritance, which allowed her to start her business 12 years ago, first in downtown Moline.
Her paternal grandfather was always her rock and his wife was her refuge (thus the source of her salon’s first name).
“It was very hard for me to find my place here in the Quad Cities, and after leaving JC Penney, I worked for a handful of private salons and could never quite find the salon experience that I wanted for my guests,” Perkins said.
She modeled her business partly after the customer-centric “magical” moments provided at Disney parks and resorts.
At Haven, Perkins emphasizes greenery, peaceful oasis and life. Friday, Nov. 7 was her one-year anniversary of opening at her current location, after being close by at 1833 52nd Ave. about nine years.
One memorable customer shared a lot of what she’d been through personally.
“We truly had a transformative experience – mind, body and soul,” Perkins recalled. “She walked out of here a completely different person. It was such a beautiful thing to see. She looked 10 years younger; you could tell a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. There was joy behind her eyes she did not have.”
“Some people look at it like it’s just a haircut – it’s not,” she said. Some customers think of it just as transactional, a service for pay. “That’s not who I am as a person; I don’t look at you as a dollar sign. I look at you as a person, at your experience, and I don’t stop caring about you when you walk out the door.”
Perkins tries to remember personal details about her clients. And her financial model works.
“If that means I go without the $25 extra that her haircut would be, that’s OK,” Perkins said. “The reality is, what goes around, comes around.”
“Because paychecks of the heart are also a thing,” she said, noting those are priceless.
For reservations at Haven Beauty Collective, call 309-749-8609 or visit havenbeautycollectiveqc.com.
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