Saks Hair and Beauty Leeds: Meet the owner of the award-winning salon that started out as a food shop

After graduating with a business degree, the owner of the award-winning Saks Hair and Beauty salon in Leeds city centre joined her parents’ business, managing health food shops in York.

The family opened its first shop in Leeds, Millie’s, in 2007. The site on Vicar Lane had a farmer’s market feel, with a cafe and kitchen - and small beauty salon upstairs.

Millie’s Beauty quickly took off and expanded, growing to eight treatment rooms on the first floor.

Natalie told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “We wanted to introduce hair services, but we were always too busy running the day-to-day to really sit down and look at how to introduce it. When Covid hit, we had time as a family to look at where the business was going and the plans for the future.“I decided I would take on the site where Millie’s was on my own, and we would restructure to offer hair and take out the health food shop.

“When we spoke to Saks, they had the same business ethics and thoughts on how businesses should run, to what I’ve always believed in.”

Two years ago, Natalie converted Millie’s into a Saks Hair and Beauty salon - offering a wide range of hair services including cuts, colouring and styling, and a head-to-toe beauty menu of face, body and glam treatments.

To celebrate its second birthday, Saks Leeds City is offering new customers their first appointment for half price on Monday-Wednesday. The offer is also available at the Saks salon in David Lloyd Leeds and details are available on the Saks website.

“We’re big on customer experience,” Natalie added. “We believe that coming to get your hair done or get a beauty treatment shouldn’t just be about how you feel or how you look afterwards.

“We want the customers to come in and really enjoy their time here - people are often so busy in their lives, whether it’s work or running around with a family, that they don’t have any me time.”

Natalie’s salon was awarded Saks’ Beauty Salon of the Year 2023 - and two of her stylists were grand finalists at the prestigious L'Oréal Colour Trophy.

“It was absolutely great,” she added. “It was the second awards we had been to as a Saks - the first one we had a brilliant time and it was really good for team bonding, to meet everyone else from the Saks group.

“When we did win it this year, we were absolutely over the moon and really proud of ourselves.”

“I really love welcoming new customers and developing the team,” Natalie added.

“We have two apprentices in hair - it’s hard for apprentices getting into the industry now and I think it’s really important to support the young talent coming through.

“There’s so many different aspects to running a business, particularly in the hair and beauty industry where it is always changing - there’s always new things coming out, new services, new treatments and new brands.

“It’s that diversity that I love.”