THREE women have made use of lockdown and opened their own business.

Keavy, Maisie and Ebony Harper opened Harper Hair, in Cecil Street in Carlisle, within six months after they all lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Keavy said: “My two cousins and I unfortunately all suffered deeply during Covid and the lockdown and all of us lost our jobs. It felt like so much happened in such a short period of time.

“We all decided to go on courses and get qualifications in the beauty industry and have now rented a floor in a salon and launched our own-brand products.

“We have no previous beauty industry experience, but literally in the space of six months we were qualified and on our way.

“Ebony was working in Australia. I was working in Barcelona, and Maisie was working for Carlisle United when we all lost our jobs after being furloughed originally.

“We decided to all attend beauty courses and trained at beauty salons across the country.

“I wanted to learn from the best at Gateshead’s Longlox, after watching them in Angels of the North, a television show about the salon.

“After we all trained, we just went straight into the business.

“We haven’t done anything to do with beauty beforehand, this was just because we wanted to do it so much, and we decided we could.

“When we went into the business, and setting it all up, we didn’t have any customers, reviews or any web presence, so we had to do it all from scratch. Thankfully though, we got loads of attention on social media before we even had our first customer.

“It’s been really crazy just how popular we’ve become.

“The way we run it is in separate departments that we all manage ourselves.

“I run hair, Maisie runs tanning and Ebony does brows.”

The team also offers self-branded beauty products.

Keavy said: “I have my own hair scrunchy brand – it’s bright pink, silky, and noticeable a mile off.

“I also do hair clips and brushes.

“It’s mad because you can see people wearing them out and about, I recognise them immediately.

“Maisie has her own brand of tanning mousse as well that is stocked in a few Carlisle tanning salons.

“Ebony has a product too that is an eyebrow wash that makes your eyebrows look laminated in case you didn’t have time to go to the salon to get them done.

“I would say that this is probably the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Harper Hair can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and their website at www.harperhair.co.uk