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BusinessNovember 15, 2021

Nick Ryan, a 1998 Cape Girardeau Central graduate, came home after a decade-and-a-half in San Francisco's technology industry to lend a hand in the family businesses — including Trend Setters School, which is celebrating 20 years in business on Friday as Southeast Missouri's only fully-accredited cosmetology and barbering academy...

Keilon Moore, left, cuts Garrett Potts' hair in this undated photo. Both were Trend Setters students in the barber program, graduating in July 2020 and September 2020, respectively.
Keilon Moore, left, cuts Garrett Potts' hair in this undated photo. Both were Trend Setters students in the barber program, graduating in July 2020 and September 2020, respectively.Submitted

Nick Ryan, a 1998 Cape Girardeau Central graduate, came home after a decade-and-a-half in San Francisco's technology industry to lend a hand in the family businesses — including Trend Setters School, which is celebrating 20 years in business on Friday as Southeast Missouri's only fully-accredited cosmetology and barbering academy.

Nick Ryan
Nick Ryan

"We used to be known as Sikeston Beauty College," said Ryan, who said the school was reincorporated as Trend Setters and later moved to Cape Girardeau in 2003. Today, Ryan is the school's administrator and is a minority owner. Ryan's grandfather, Kenneth Storey, is Trend Setters' primary owner.

"My wife and I had a daughter out in California, and San Francisco is a very expensive place to live even when you don't have children," Ryan said, adding his association with the school at 835 S. Kingshighway began in 2015.

Ryan, who holds an undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University and a master's from St. Louis' Washington University, said his aptitude for management came in handy upon his return to this area.

"At the time I stepped in, the school had undergone a lot of staff turnover, plus we had some issues with our accreditation back then. I made a lot of changes quickly and sort of righted the ship but it took a couple of years to get us back on track. We are fully accredited now and have been since 2017. We have scored perfect accreditation marks twice now," he said.

Dana Faulkner, a January 2020 Trend Setters graduate, cuts the hair of a fellow student in this pre-pandemic photo.
Dana Faulkner, a January 2020 Trend Setters graduate, cuts the hair of a fellow student in this pre-pandemic photo.Submitted

Pandemic's impact

"COVID was a challenge. (Hair) is one of the few industries in addition to health care where you put your hands on another person. We didn't really know what to do at first and we shut down the school for two months," Ryan said, who added when it was time to reopen, he was honest with the school's teachers.

"I had to get everybody together in our largest room, all of us 12 feet apart, and I had to say, 'This is weird. I know none of you signed up for this but we're going to get through it. Please don't quit,'" he said. "We didn't lose any staff and I still can't believe that."

Ryan said he is grateful for the way the Trend Setters faculty weathered the COVID storm.

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"The staff had to come up with classes to teach over Zoom. We parceled out supplies for every student and put them outside for pickup," Ryan recalled. "Everybody took their stuff home, logged in online and we started teaching classes over the internet for three or four weeks."

Ryan said on-campus learning resumed in June 2020 with shower curtains hung between every station because of coronavirus protocols.

The school fully opened to the public in March.

"We were very big on sanitizing and I had to threaten to kick people out of school if masks weren't worn," he remembered.

Strict adherence to masking, social distancing and other precautions, Ryan said, had a positive effect.

"We usually have one month where we have all these absences due to influenza but last year, because we had all of these sanitizing procedures in place, not only didn't get any flu, we also did not have a COVID outbreak," he said.

Drilling down

  • Trend Setters, Ryan said, has graduated approximately 1,000 students over the past two decades.

"We've had some years with pretty high enrollment and we graduate between 20 and 50 students annually now," he said. "Since we're a Title IV school, the institution and our students were able to access government funding during the pandemic."

  • The school's flagship program in cosmetology, a 50-week program, which is 95% attended by women.
  • The school's 32-week barber program has a student census of 85% to 90% men.
  • Trend Setters also offers a six-day barber crossover training for already licensed cosmetologists.

"We have good people here, committed to their jobs, who have a passion for their work and they stuck with us through a crazy time," Ryan said. "The staff had to come up with these classes on the fly and to teach in a way they'd never been trained to teach. I feel gratitude for them, for the men and women who trust us with their education and for the clients who trust us to let our students work on them — because this is how our students learn."

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