The Chicago salon, at 2336 N. Clark St., opened last month and is the fourth Hair Fairies in the nation. Founder and CEO Maria Botham said she came up with the idea in 1997 after reading an article about head lice.
"I ran it by my friends and family, and they all said I was absolutely nuts," said Botham, 37. She went ahead anyway, opening her first shop in Los Angeles in 1999.
That one is expecting a gross revenue of $1.8 million for 2007 and $2.5 million this year.
Botham went with the design of a luxury boutique in one of Chicago's ritziest neighborhoods, Lincoln Park, to help break the stigma of lice, she said.
Lice, which do not discriminate by socioeconomic class, are not necessarily more prevalent in Lincoln Park. But it's one city neighborhood where people have the money to pay the salon's $95-an-hour charge.
Mary Lasky, Grace's mother, had been treating the girl with over-the-counter remedies since October, when she found a live louse in the girl's hair. She said administrators at her daughter's private school spotted nits in the girl's hair in mid-December and sent her and six classmates home.
"I'm so frustrated, so I drove here," said Lasky of Chicago. "I would have paid $1,000" to have gotten rid of the bugs the first time around.
The mother of one of Grace's friends, Kim Van Nortwick, thought the prospect of a delousing business was "silly" when she first heard about it, she said. That was before she kept her daughter home from school for a week for fear she would get lice. Then she spotted a suspected nit on her own head.
"Now I'm like, `Thank God,' because nothing we're doing is working," said Van Nortwick of Chicago. "It's a godsend."
Since Hair Fairies opened in Chicago, it has had at least 300 clients, said Damaris Rodriguez, manager of the L.A. store, who came to town to help with the opening.
When customers arrive, a technician determines if there are any nits or lice. They comb through the hair dry, wet it down, apply conditioner and go through the whole head again.
"We're combing thoroughly throughout the entire head before we say you're lice-free," Rodriguez said. If a nit or louse is found, the salon schedules three to four treatments.
Clients are encouraged to purchase the company's nontoxic and organic products: shampoo, conditioner, prevention oil, lice repellent spray and laundry additive to combat the parasites at home. The costs of these products range from $10.79 to $20.39.
