{"id":112228,"date":"2015-05-24T23:42:32","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T05:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/his-own-way\/"},"modified":"2015-05-24T23:42:32","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T05:42:32","slug":"his-own-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/his-own-way\/","title":{"rendered":"His own way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Matthew
Matthew Black has opened Matthew\u2019s Walk-ins Haircuts at 360 W. First St., in Cortez.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After five years of working in and most recently, managing, a local chain salon, Cortez resident and hairstylist Matthew Black is venturing out on his own.<\/p>\n

Black was most recently a stylist and manager at the Great Clips on Main Street, a job he left last month to open Matthew\u2019s Walk-ins Haircuts.<\/p>\n

Over the past month, he\u2019s been working on renovating his new space, which is housed in the former Department of Motor Vehicles office at the corner of First Street and Maple.<\/p>\n

He remembers pulling up the carpet and seeing scuff marks from the front door to leading up to the middle of the room where he now has his check-in counter, relics most-likely left behind from decades of cranky DMV patrons shuffling in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been joking that I need to get someone in here to do a cleansing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His hopes are that his high-end hairstyle offerings with chain store price points will be enough to put new patrons in a better mood.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur prices compete with Wal-Mart and Great Clips, but I would say that the quality competes with Viva and Envy,\u201d said Black. Black completed his cosmetology degree program at 6th Street Salon in Durango, and studied under its owners Barb and Fred Acosta, who themselves studied with salon magnate Vidal Sasoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked at the chain salons and cranked out haircut after haircut; you didn\u2019t really have the time to do the specialized stuff\u2026I have the business model down but now I have the freedom to do more of that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his time at Great Clips, Black says he became known for his \u201cfades\u201d and other specialized mens\u2019 cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to get a lot of business from the Rez and from all over the community from people coming in for fades,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Black also does specialized cuts and color for women as well as kids haircuts.<\/p>\n

The former Army medic and Fort Lewis College grad lives in Cortez with his wife and now 11-year-old son, after moving from Durango in 2005. He got into cosmetology late in life, making the switch when he was 40 after a near-spiritual epiphany, and says he loves it with a \u201cridiculous passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s lately been inspired by other Cortez-based small-business owners taking financial and professional leaps of faith to carve out a place for themselves in an economically challenging area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s scary coming from the comfort of my regular income and starting something in an area like Cortez, but this is a town that if you\u2019re not making your own way, a lot of time you\u2019re scraping by working small jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cCortez has so much potential for growth because of the regional access. You almost have to draw a 100-mile circle around the city when looking at the market because there are so many people coming through from the Rez or from Utah, Arizona. There\u2019s so much potential here, and I\u2019m just trying to eek out my little bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew\u2019s Walk-in Haircuts opens off Main Street<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[338,21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-business-enterprises","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112228"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}