Couple sees light and cash in organic business ventures

Salon Maiya owner, May Aguilar Pono (top photo), opens its first all-natural Salon Maiya in Duterte Street, Barangay Banawa, Cebu City. CDN PHOTO/AILEEN GARCIA YAP

FROM ONO TO SALON MAIYA

Her 72-year-old mother’s death of cancer in 2010 opened a female lawyer’s eyes to the harmful effects of chemical-based products and made her a believer and an advocate of anything all natural and organic.

This belief led lawyer May Aguilar Pono and her husband, Roland, to embark on a business that involves all natural and organic products.

It also helped that both of them are lovers of these kinds of products, which made it easier for them to go into the business of manufacturing and selling organic skin care products – under the brand Ono.

Ono

“Ono is an all natural skin care brand which we officially launched in 2014. This is our main business. The salon is a natural progression. It also provides us a venue to make people more aware about our products and the benefits of going natural,” said May, who was referring to Salon Maiya, which the couple officially opened last March 1.

The couple through the salon aims to create awareness about the benefits of using organic beauty products and to allow people to experience its benefits first hand through their services.

This jibes with their goal to make more people aware of the benefits of organic and natural products – a market, which the couple sees as a viable market especially since only a small part of the whole population is aware of organic and natural products.

“I say there is a real need to push for the natural and organic products, and we made that our mission as well,” said May, who together with her husband pooled their savings to invest it into their business.

Salon Maiya

Salon Maiya is located at UNA Residences, R. Duterte Street in Barangay Banawa, Cebu City.

The salon offers all-natural skin and hair treatments as well as services with zero or low toxicity.

“We also offer regular services or those that you commonly see in a typical salon. Actually it’s more of just a way to attract them to come to our salon but once they’re here we usually talk to them about trying our all-natural treatments by telling them the benefits and people will really want to try the services and end up liking it,” she said.

Regular services

For the regular services, they offer Keratin treatments, Organique Hair Rebond with Morocco Argan Oil and HairRepair Mask, hair bleach, highlights, hair color, hair and makeup and haircut.

For the zero or low toxicity services, the salon offers non-toxic manicure and pedicure, low-ammonia hair color and zero-ammonia hair color.

All-natural services

May, however, said they put more emphasis on their all-natural services which includes an all-natural fruit and non-fruit facials, all-natural hot oil treatment, all-natural hair mask, and all-natural foot and hand spa.

These services make use of all natural ingredients like strawberry, banana, mangosteen, papaya and coffee for their facials.

Pono said they buy their ingredients in Carbon which they then mix in their production area at their home’s backyard in Mabolo with her husband Rex who studied Chemistry in the United States of America.

“We have people on-call to help us when we are doing the production both for the salon and Ono,” she said

At the salon, Pono has hired a total of six people to help her serve their growing number of patrons.

To push and promote the salon and their services to more people, Pono decided to take her business online by creating a Facebook Page for Salon Maiya where they post the services they offer.

According to Pono, she hopes to reach more women and introduce them to the all-natural beauty remedy that Salon Maiya offers.