Who said Mt. Hood Community College programs aren’t profitable? The cosmetology department is able to pay for themselves and then some. For Imagemakers, the cosmetology club, good business means improvements in their facilities.

Imagemakers President Janae Ratley is aiming to get the club and the program more business. “What we’re really looking forward to is getting more people in here and getting people to know about us because we have slowed down so much, it’s insane. I know the college is slow too, but no one seems to know about us, and we want people to know about us, because the girls here are really, really good and we all work hard.

“We’re a full service salon so we do facials, pedicures, manicures, fake nails, color, cuts, perms, thermo-relaxing, everything. Almost everything a regular salon offers, we have. Plus all college students get 10% off on any service and 20% off on all products if they buy it when they’re getting a service. Haircuts are seven dollars so, for all the college students here, it’s $6.30 for a cut.”

Ratley also believes in the talent present in the program. “I’ve never seen anybody walk out of here with a horrible color or horrible cut. All the girls and the two guys that we have are really good.”

Imagemakers is looking forward to getting a new look. They have purchased new stations, to be installed between Spring and Summer terms. After fundraising and salon sales, the cosmetology department was able to raise enough money to purchase the new stations on their own.

Lynn D’Angelo, program advisor, said, “Everything in here is over thirty years old.”
The money has come from many sources. “We’re a cost recovery program,” said D’Angelo, “and so after we made enough money to pay for [the program], we had more than what we needed for our expenses, by about $30,000. We worked really hard. The money that we had left over…gets to come back into the program. Last year the salon made $85,000 from the services that we do.”

That money wasn’t quite enough though, Ratley said. “They were going to have [the stations installed] from fall to winter. They said that break, that we were going to get them then, and we came back and we didn’t have enough money and we were going through a different contractor, then the school [said], we don’t know if you have the money, we don’t know about this, that’s why last term we started to work really hard at the fundraising because we all want these stations.”

The club was able to raise almost $2,000 through their fundraising efforts. “We did a raffle last semester and raised $900, and the term before that we sold Krispy Kremes. That kind of bombed, we bought too many; we didn’t really raise that much money.”
The club also gets a portion of the proceeds from product sales, said Ratley. They also asked student government to help out. “[ASG] granted us $1,300 to go towards that fund.”
The most successful fundraising effort was the raffle.

Ratley said, “We’re going to do the raffle again, what we did last term and what we’re going to do again this term is: we got a big basket, last term it was $250 worth of products in the basket, and $100 worth of services, and the tickets were two for five or three apiece. Last term we got the photo department to donate a photo shoot after we did the hair and makeup. We’re hoping that they will do that again this term.”

The anticipation is great in the department about the new stations. Said Ratley, “We hate the stations we have now. They’re old. Hopefully we’ll get them before the girls leave because some of the girls are leaving and they worked hard to earn that money, too. They want to see a change before they go. Hopefully this term we’ll get them.”

Imagemakers is planning other activities, one of which they have named haircuts to high schools. Ratley said, “We go to all the high schools and talk to them about our program to get people, not only to come in here, but if they are interested in a cosmetology program to let them know we’re here. At one of the high schools, I think it’s on the 22nd of April, we are going to give 125 of the kids 50 percent off haircuts so they can come in and get a haircut for $3.50.”

More improvements are needed in the department, Ratley said. “Our plumbing is horrible, really bad. The sinks are always leaking, we’ve got a mess all over the floor back there, the water never gets hot, we are washing with cold water. It’s terrible. But the girls have worked really, really hard to earn the money and we’re all really excited about getting new stations because these stations are thirty years old.”

Ratley wanted to share the Imagemakers’ fundraising knowledge. “We went to local businesses, this is funny because we were just talking about this is the SOC meeting a couple of weeks ago, and everybody was saying you can’t get sponsorships from outside of the school, like from businesses, but we wrote down 25 businesses like Lowe’s and Geno’s, businesses around here, some of them the girls work for, some of them we don’t.”

“And [we prepared] to go them and ask them for any kind of sponsorship we could get for our stations. The college said okay for every single business we put down there. So it’s good for other clubs to know, you can go ask for business sponsorships. No, they might not do it, but yes, the college will allow you to. And [the business] can write it off as a tax write off. We have the okay to do it, but now we don’t want to go out and get sponsorships if we don’t need to.”

Ratley believes in the potential of the program. “We’re one of the best schools around to come for cosmetology. Because we’re here four days a week, forty hours and we all work very hard and we want to. We need our education. We’re so slow, we’re working on mannequin heads, and we want to be working on people. I think that’s our biggest thing, we want to get people here. And to be more involved with the college, to be out there more.”

Cosmetology is located in AC 1127, in the main mall.