March 30, 2021

Jaye Edwards | Founder of Edwards And Co and Jaye Haircare

42 minutes

In episode sixty three of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Edwards And Co and Jaye Haircare, Jaye Edwards.

I knew Jaye Edwards as a brand founder and the man behind some of this country’s most renowned, and easily its most recognisable, hair salons, but admittedly I hadn’t realised just how far he’d come to get where he is now.

Jaye grew up in a really small town, and knowing he didn’t quite fit in there or in the schooling system, he left home at only 15, moved to Sydney, and fell into an apprenticeship at a hair salon. At around 21, he bought into the salon he was working at- and subsequently lost everything, to the tune of $50,000.

Where most would have thrown in the towel, Jaye tells me his ethos was to “fail fast, learn a lot and move on,” and so he opened the very first Edwards and Co salon soon thereafter. Today, Jaye sits at the helm of the eight Edwards and Co locations across Australia and his namesake brand, Jaye Haircare (which has just launched into Mecca), with Jaye constantly adapting his business model, making him, sincerely, one of the most progressive founders I’ve had the pleasure of chatting to.

Usually when I say something like “even if you don’t have an interest in beauty, this conversation will have something for you,” it’s because I think anyone interested in business in general can take something from it- but in this case, I really think what Jaye has to say is relevant for everyone, even if your interests lie in neither business nor beauty. I think Jaye’s story is one of really incredible resilience, and also a poignant reminder that you don’t have to have it all figured out from day one in order to be successful. Granted Jaye discovered a love for hair and beauty really young, but his story still felt so different from many of our other guests in that despite suffering such great loss, he came back, and everything he has now, he created for himself.

In this conversation, Jaye shares how he and his team physically and mentally made it through the events of the last year, how he managed to maintain the Edwards and Co DNA when opening a location within another brand’s space, and why he walked out of his first job during his lunch break.