New Yorkers call up hairstyling entrepreneur Cozy Wolan, 33, and head to Cozy's Cuts for Kids-toy-filled salons whose miniature-Jeep barber chairs, videotape libraries and patient hairdressers increase the chances of tantrum-free clipping for even the tiniest nippers. With two branches in tony Manhattan locales, Cozy's has attracted a fervent following of famous parents, including Rosie O'Donnell, Isabella Rossellini, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith, and Natasha Richardson and Liam Nee-son. "It's a great setup for kids," declares O'Donnell, who says her son Parker, 3, "genuinely likes getting his hair cut." Adds Richardson, who takes sons Micheal, 3, and Daniel, 2: "After you've been there, you wouldn't dream of sending your kids to a normal hairdresser."
Indeed, Cozy's, which offers $23 cuts and $8 bang trims to kids aged 7 days to 12 years, is a far cry from the corner barbershop. Squirm-prone tots can watch movies or play video games; stylists soothe scaredycats by blowing bubbles or introducing their electric clippers as "Mr. Tickle." Although chairs are available, younger clients jump for the Jeeps: "They don't think they're sitting there for a haircut; they think they're sitting in a ride," says actress Smith, who brought her son Dylan in last month to fix a ragged do that the fidgety not-quite-2-year-old had gotten elsewhere. "He looks very stylish again," she says.
Wolan doesn't cut hair herself, but holds her 17 stylists to a high standard: "They have to have the right child-friendly personality and be experienced hairdressers, because children are moving targets," she says. Most of Cozy's cuts aren't too radical. "For boys, we do a lot of that classic side-part haircut," says Wolan. "A lot of girls now want to look like [children's-book heroine] Madeline, which is a bob with bangs." Every child leaves with a balloon, a lollipop and a small toy; first-timers get a certificate with a lock of their hair attached. And each Cozy salon also sells a selection of the latest toys. "We had the Teletubbies and the Spice Girl dolls in when nobody else did," Wolan says.
Wolan honed her business savvy as a child in Queens, where she and her older brother Alan, encouraged by their mother, Deedee, now 58, a former Rolls-Royce saleswoman, sometimes set up a stand in their apartment building's lobby to hawk used books and toys. (Deedee divorced Wolan's father, Sidney, 65, a physician, when Wolan was 5.) After majoring in communications at the University of Massachusetts, Wolan went to work for clothier Z. Cavaricci and rose from receptionist to East Coast sales manager for its denim division. Still, she longed to open her own business. "I just didn't know what kind of business it was going to be," she says.
She had a brainstorm just before her 1993 marriage to college sweetheart Joseph Friedman, now 33, an investment banker. A friend told her how she had taken her nephew to an expensive salon for a haircut, only to be asked to leave when the terrified tot started screaming. "I realized there was this huge market that was completely untapped," says Wolan.
Quitting her job, Wolan attended barber school and worked for nearly a year at several toy stores and at a children's indoor playground to prepare. In 1994 she opened a Cozy's on Manhattan's Upper East Side, then in January 1996 expanded to the West Side. With sales topping $1 million, Wolan now plans outposts for downtown Manhattan and the city's northern suburbs. She has also embarked on another enterprise: Her first child, Shane Daniel Friedman, was born on Feb. 17. "With," she says proudly, "a full head of brown hair."
Samantha Miller
Debbie Seaman in New York City
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