Juju Grooms
We spoke with Proprietor and Lead Groomer, Juju Castelo (she/her), and Branding and Social Media Coordinator, Britney Bentick (she/her) of Juju Grooms, Store Juju and Kitty Korner.
What are you able to inform me about your grooming enterprise?
Juju Grooms began off in our two-bedroom condo. On the time, the enterprise was named TwoTails. In 2020, we determined we needed to open a brick-and-mortar retailer and opened that December. We now have now been in that location for 5 years!
We now have constructed a popularity based mostly on belief, transparency, and remodeling your pets’ expertise with the method of being groomed. Juju Grooms was based on the rules of optimistic reinforcement, low-impact grooming. We make it a degree to rent like-minded people. Everybody has a distinct approach of grooming, however our method and enterprise ethos is non-negotiable. Our staff’s focus is on the pets’ greatest pursuits and total expertise.
After three years of being in enterprise, we opened our second location in 2023, Store Juju. After which in 2024, we opened Kitty Korner, Toronto’s first unique cat grooming salon. We’re so happy with the work that now we have achieved rehabilitating canines and cats that others have labeled as “troublesome” the “ungroomable”.
Due to our efforts, Juju Grooms is an award-winning pet grooming salon that has been acknowledged for its efforts within the Toronto Star. Store Juju has additionally been honored to have been featured in British Vogue, Glamour and British GQ.
What 
would you say is your distinctive promoting level?
There are specific traits, as a groomer, that can’t be taught. I consider our groomers possess these traits. Every one among our groomers has an unbelievable stage of endurance and calming vitality. Due to these traits, our groomers are in a position to deal with what others would name troublesome, aggressive, and difficult pets, with a stage of care that’s exhausting to seek out.
That is what I believe makes our companies so distinctive. We tackle the canines and cats which were turned away from different salons, those which are seen as unimaginable to groom.
We rehabilitate plenty of our purchasers and get them to a degree the place they’re snug, completely satisfied or on the very least now not pressured by the grooming course of. We method grooming realizing that not each groom could be aesthetically pleasing. Generally, crucial factor is that your pets are snug, and that doesn’t all the time look the prettiest.
What are you able to inform me about the way you skilled to be a canine groomer?
Juju began off her profession learning to be a nurse. When she was learning, she took a job as a canine bather at a salon. As she labored there, she fell in love together with her job and fell deeper in love with canines.
Grooming turned her ardour, so she requested to be skilled as a groomer. A senior groomer took her on, and she or he started the method. Over time, she developed an curiosity in cat grooming as properly. She discovered a program that taught her methods to be a Grasp Licensed Feline groomer within the states, hopped on a airplane and realized from the most effective.
Juju has by no means been one to take a seat nonetheless or to cease her training. As time has handed, she has continued to additional her grooming training, going to seminars, flying to grooming conventions within the States, and flying to Korea together with her groomers to take an Asian Fashion grooming course.
Do you could have any “hidden gems” you’d prefer to share with our readers?
By no means underestimate the significance of branding, model and what your area seems and seems like. Plenty of what helps us stand out as a enterprise earlier than individuals get to know what we do is what we appear to be.
Every of our shops has a particular really feel, Juju Grooms is relaxed, calming, fashionable, and clear. Calming greens and pure wooden tones assist evoke the sensation of belief and calm. Store Juju is enjoyable, fashionable, punchy; pink, yellow, inexperienced, blue, purple and lightweight wooden tones make for an thrilling buying expertise. Kitty Korner is shiny, completely satisfied and calming; lotions and yellows make for a heat and alluring area.
What recommendation would you give to different canine groomers who’re simply beginning out within the trade?
One of the best recommendation I may give can be to discover a good salon that permits you to develop and has an curiosity in educating its groomers. I might additionally suggest that YOU by no means lose your curiosity in studying extra. Nobody can ever know all the pieces, so continue learning and continue to grow all through your profession. This trade is all the time evolving, and there’s all the time one thing new to study.
Are there any basic ideas you’d prefer to share?
I consider groomers and enterprise homeowners needs to be working collectively as an entire to have the identical objectives, which is offering secure, stress-free environments for our purchasers. Grooming is a hectic course of, irrespective of the way you have a look at it. I consider it’s our accountability to make the expertise as stress-free as doable.
Transparency and communication are crucial to a consumer, and if we’re in a position to successfully talk with them, it permits for each them and their pets to really feel extra comfy.
Animals can sense our feelings, and if their homeowners are calmer, they are going to be too.
