Sundance welcomes new businesses

Sundance welcomes several new businesses this summer, all of which offer services for mind, body, soul – or all three. As well as the community of wellness entrepreneurs that have come together in the Morale Business Center, two barbershops have recently opened their doors.

Business Center

Now under new ownership, the Morale Business Center at 113 S. West Street has completed its journey to becoming a community of entrepreneurs who offer different, but complementary services related to health, beauty and wellness.

New owner Carol Jordan, through family corporation Triangle J Properties, LLC, is excited to invite the community to give the center a new name to celebrate this moment.

“We want it to mean something to the community and belong to the community – we want to serve Sundance,” she says. “When they say the name, we want them to know what’s there.”

The center now boasts a full house, she says, with all suites currently rented. Jordan’s own business, the “Love Living” Wellness Center provided by Aladdin Therapy LLC, is the icing on a cake she says was already coming together.

“Each one is independent and everyone has their own schedule as far as booking, but they’re very complementary,” Jordan says. “They had already started in that direction, so I just rounded it out.”

Jordan is a licensed physical therapist who has expanded her practice by adding Oola Life Coaching, nutritional counseling, body compositions analysis, metabolic analysis, personal training and strength and conditioning to work to help you transform in to your best self as you learn to “Love Living Well”. Product lines for natural health and wellness are also available for humans and pets, including horse massage.

“We really work hard to be the one-stop shop for natural health and wellness, complementing our other providers in the building,” she says.

Hangin’ Heart Permanent Cosmetics by Tess Steedley offers permanent make-up for brows and lashes, including initial application of brow color and eyeliner as well as touch-ups for up to two years following the initial appointment.

Massage by April offers a wide range of services including Swedish, therapeutic/deep tissue, hot stone, prenatal, cupping, instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization and warm bamboo massage, as well as integrative reflexology. April Smith is a licensed massage therapist.

Tanayah Gutierrez is a licensed aesthetician, as well as a lash technician and certified spray tan artist. Her services range from eyelash extensions and fills to back facials, brow waxing, therapeutic facials, microdermabrasion and waxing (including facial, chest, leg and bikini, back, arms and underarms), as well as add-ons including LED light therapy for skin, scalp massage and exfoliating lip scrub.

Hill Country Healing by Raesha Sell specializes in Quantum Energetics Structured Therapy, or QEST, which is described as a hands-on and non-invasive methodology that stimulates your body’s own ability to heal. Through this therapy, Sell identifies deep, underlying causes for symptoms and the corresponding corrective procedures to offer wholeness.

A tanning bed is also available, while the upstairs is now occupied by a private photographer. A quiet common space with access to a computer will also be available in the building.

Evening classes will also be offered to the community, offering opportunities to try new skills or learn about new topics.

“Part of my business is supporting entrepreneurs, so I’ll be teaching classes on things like stress, hormones and health,” Jordan says. “We’re going to have a gal come in and do scrapbooking classes, we’ll have a gal teach small-footprint planting and other things like that.”

The individual business owners may also offer classes about the services they offer as an introduction to clients.

“It’s a great space and it would just be a shame to not use it,” Jordan says.

The idea of several different entrepreneurs operating their own businesses in a communal, complementary way speaks to the center’s focus on the importance of a balanced life, Jordan says.

“All of these independent, successful, highly-skilled clinicians and practitioners in their own trade can have a work-life balance, which is part of how they make their own schedule,” she says.

To launch this new era for the center, Jordan and her colleagues would like to invite the community to give the building a new name that encapsulates its new look and feel. She plans to create a shortlist – including a couple of ideas from the business owners themselves – and will be placing the names of anyone who contributes an idea in a prize drawing.

An open house is planned for the near future, where names for the prize will be drawn.

Ideas can be submitted through the Facebook page, which at this time has the center’s current name, “Morale Business Center”; the shortlist will also be available for viewing on that page. A box has also been placed in the entrance to the building for physical submissions.

“Come in, take your own personal tour to see what’s there and then drop your names in the box,” Jordan says.

Individual business cards detailing the hours of each business are available in the lobby area.

Amos’s Barbershop

The sequence of events that led to Amos Armijo opening his own barber shop in Sundance was one of those times when the stars seemed determined to align.

Armijo originally worked for Mark’s Barbershop in Spearfish, leaving to open his own business in Belle Fourche before moving back to Spearfish when his lease was up.

Then, he says, “Another company wanted to buy me out, so I let them,” describing the first step towards his brand new business venture in Sundance.

“I live in Pine Haven. I wanted to be closer and I have a lot of clients from here anyway, so I [figured I] might as well make it closer for them and a little easier on the pocketbook with the gas prices,” he says.

“How I look at it is that I was meant to be here when I first left Mark’s Barbershop. I was supposed to come straight here and I never did it.”

When you go by what you want rather than what the universe is demanding of you, Armijo says, fate has a way of course-correcting on its own.

“A year ago, every door was being slammed in my face, so I thought, maybe we should just go over to Gillette because there are more people, but every door shut in my face,” he says.

But then, he called Sundance City Hall, and that single phone call took him to the owner of his current premises, who had an opening ready and waiting for an occupant.

“Everything just opened up and the parts fell into place,” he says. “I was waiting and being patient, trying to find the right place, and the right place kind of found me.”

It didn’t even take much to transform the barber shop into the welcoming place Armijo was aiming for, he said. Some tile floor – which he found in the right size and color in the first store he checked – and a sink, and he was ready to invite clients into his chair.

“I’ve been greeted very well,” Armijo says of his current and new clients. “It is like I was meant to be here.”

Armijo became a barber after leaving his original career building airplanes in McDonnell Douglas in Salt Lake City, UT. When he was let go as part of a large lay-off, the company offered to fund training in a new skill for the employees it was letting go, and Armijo decided barbering seemed like a skill he’d like to master.

“I didn’t know if I was going to be good at it, but I actually found it pretty easy and gratifying,” he says.

Amos’s Barbershop is currently open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

“I do walk-ins only,” he says. In his experience, he explains, not requiring an appointment better meets the preferences and expectations of his clients.

All cuts are charged at one set price and include beard trim as part of the service. Armijo is capable of most styles, he says, including the latest trends

Color and perms are not available.

Amos’s Barbershop is located at 110 North 5th St. For further information, call 307-283-3410, or stop in for some good conversation and attentive service.

Sundance Barber Shop

The business center within the Deer Lodge Motel recently welcomed a new addition in the form of the Sundance Barber Shop, run by husband-and-wife barber team Skye Seeley and McKennon Aragon.

“We pride ourselves on being a full-service barber shop, doing everything from haircuts to beard trims to straight razor shaves,” says Aragon. “There are a lot of barber shops that just cut hair, and that’s fine, but we wanted to offer the full deal.”

Color and chemicals are not available.

The couple recently moved to the area from Gillette. “I am originally from Sundance and I decided to move closer to my family and my family ranch,” says Seeley.

Barbering brought the couple together in the first place. Aragon and Seeley met while working together at Rapscallion’s Barber Shop in Gillette. Aragon helped build the barber shop and had been working there a while before his barber instructor in Casper called to recommend her as a potentially good fit.

It would be months, though, before they began dating. When Seeley first arrived, he smiles, “Little did I know I was working next to my soulmate.”

“People always ask what it’s like working with your wife all day every day and we just laugh. You keep work stuff at work and home life at home, and it’s like working with your best friend,” he adds.

After getting married last year, the couple decided to move to Sundance and launch their own business. While Seeley’s family still lives in this area, it gave Aragon the advantage of being right in the middle of family members living in Spearfish and Gillette.

“It’s a good landing spot for us,” he says. “We noticed that Sundance was lacking a barber shop, Skye is from there and we liked spending time there, so we decided we were going to try to make the move.”

The business center is quickly becoming a one-stop shop for aesthetic and health services. Also along the strip, you can find a salon, massage parlor, tanning salon and aesthetics parlor.

“I was pretty excited when I saw those rooms came up. [The motel owner] wanted to do a business center and I thought, shoot, I bet we could fit two barber’s chairs in there and turn it into our own realm,” he says.

The couple spent a few weeks before opening giving the premises the exact aesthetic they wanted, focusing on a look that would be welcoming for the community. They introduced décor that either has a story behind it or a sentimental meaning.

“Most of our décor is either handmade by Skye’s family, or we decorated with things we found from the ranch for more of a western theme. There are some cool panoramic pictures of the Sundance area from the early 1950s.”

The Sundance Barber Shop is open Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., as well as on Saturday by appointment only. For more information or to book an appointment, call 307-282-0520.