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 condominium. 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 have now now been in that location for 5 years!
We have now constructed a status primarily based on belief, transparency, and remodeling your pets’ expertise with the method of being groomed. Juju Grooms was based on the ideas of constructive reinforcement, low-impact grooming. We make it a degree to rent like-minded people. Everybody has a distinct method of grooming, however our strategy and enterprise ethos is non-negotiable. Our workforce’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 pleased with the work that we now have finished 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 particular traits, as a groomer, that can not be taught. I consider our groomers possess these traits. Every one in every of our groomers has an unbelievable stage of endurance and calming power. Due to these traits, our groomers are capable of deal with what others would name troublesome, aggressive, and difficult pets, with a stage of care that’s arduous to seek out.
That is what I believe makes our companies so distinctive. We tackle the canines and cats which have been turned away from different salons, those which can be seen as unimaginable to groom.
We rehabilitate plenty of our purchasers and get them to some extent the place they’re snug, completely happy or on the very least now not harassed by the grooming course of. We strategy grooming realizing that not each groom may be aesthetically pleasing. Typically, 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 along with her job and fell deeper in love with canines.
Grooming grew to become 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 nicely. She discovered a program that taught her the way to be a Grasp Licensed Feline groomer within the states, hopped on a aircraft and realized from the perfect.
Juju has by no means been one to sit down nonetheless or to cease her schooling. As time has handed, she has continued to additional her grooming schooling, going to seminars, flying to grooming conventions within the States, and flying to Korea along with her groomers to take an Asian Type grooming course.
Do you’ve any “hidden gems” you’d prefer to share with our readers?
By no means underestimate the significance of branding, fashion and what your house seems to be and appears like. Lots of what helps us stand out as a enterprise earlier than individuals get to know what we do is what we seem like.
Every of our shops has a selected really feel, Juju Grooms is relaxed, calming, trendy, and clear. Calming greens and pure wooden tones assist evoke the sensation of belief and calm. Store Juju is enjoyable, trendy, punchy; pink, yellow, inexperienced, blue, purple and light-weight wooden tones make for an thrilling buying expertise. Kitty Korner is brilliant, completely happy and calming; lotions and yellows make for a heat and welcoming house.
What recommendation would you give to different canine groomers who’re simply beginning out within the business?
One of the best recommendation I may give could be to discover a good salon that lets you develop and has an curiosity in educating its groomers. I might additionally advocate that YOU by no means lose your curiosity in studying extra. Nobody can ever know every thing, so continue learning and continue to grow all through your profession. This business is all the time evolving, and there’s all the time one thing new to study.
Are there any normal ideas you’d prefer to share?
I consider groomers and enterprise house owners needs to be working collectively as a complete to have the identical objectives, which is offering secure, stress-free environments for our purchasers. Grooming is a worrying course of, irrespective of the way you take a look at it. I consider it’s our duty to make the expertise as stress-free as attainable.
Transparency and communication are essential to a consumer, and if we’re capable of 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 house owners are calmer, they are going to be too.
