Sugar House has long had a hot pink beauty mark: the stylized, glowing “g” atop a small brick shop on a busy corner of 2100 South.
The sign above Got Beauty was a beacon of pampering and whimsy. Salon patrons could get pedicures perched on a velvet settee or facials behind a velvet curtain. Shoppers wove through a maze of spa-quality shampoos and conditioners, makeup and skin care, stocked alongside gifts that ranged from the inspirational to the snarky and mildly profane. Each offering, said founder and owner Tammy Taylor, was chosen to “surprise and delight.”
Her vision and her team guided Got Beauty and its visitors through a recession, a global pandemic, years of construction that clogged the street outside and ever-evolving beauty standards.
And on its last day, Got Beauty shined brighter than ever.
Shelves usually stacked high with goods that could only be reached via a rolling ladder had been emptied by enthusiastic bargain hunters, leaving the sun to shine unobstructed through the store’s tall windows.
The space looked “so foreign,” Taylor said, though all of its characteristic velvet decor — inspired by her favorite fairy tales — remained.
And as last-day shoppers enjoyed tiny cupcakes and former staffers returned to say goodbye, the feeling inside, she said, was the same.
“It’s the people,” not the products, who made the store and salon what it was, she said.
Got Beauty closed Tuesday after 35 years in business. The lease was up on its space on 2100 South in the plaza of the Smith’s store behind it, and Taylor decided she would take advantage of the opportunity to retire.
On Black Friday, staffers had provided bags to shoppers and explained that everything they could fit inside would be 50% off. At opening, a line stretched into the parking lot, with people allowed inside a few at a time to meet fire code. Taylor later offered the same half-off deal storewide. It was her parting gift to her customers — and a way to clear out inventory before the store closed for good.
On the final day, as Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter sang through the shop’s speakers, the 60-year-old owner and the “GBGs” (Got Beauty Girls) reflected on their legacy and what they built.
Thirty-five years ago, Taylor said, she didn’t have the language to name what she was creating, but she now understands it was a community.
“It was just this feeling of support, of being able to lean on one another and influence one another,” Taylor said. “We help each other grow.”
Got Beauty has employed hundreds of people, mostly women, Taylor said. Many of them have branched out on their own under Taylor’s mentorship.
Taylor “helped support people to do their own thing,” said Jenni Holmstead, who was the store’s general manager for 15 years.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Owner Tammy Taylor, third from the left, stands with her longtime employees during the last day of business at Got Beauty in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024.
Holmstead, who left six years ago and now works in real estate, came back for the store’s final weeks to lend a hand and to celebrate.
“This is so unique,” she said of the environment at Got Beauty. “I started working here when I was 19. It changed the trajectory of my life in so many ways.”
Taylor shared her plans privately with employees a year ago to give them time to figure out their next move, she said.
Stylist Jen Kendall said in an email to The Tribune that her new studio will be two blocks away from Got Beauty, so it will be “close and convenient” for her clients to switch. She also expects the “GBGs” to remain connected.
“I don’t think that I could ever feel content without that strong and thriving female community interaction every day,” Kendall said.
Kendall, Holmstead and hundreds of other “GBGs” are part of the Got Beauty root system that has long cultivated new branches. “You can’t get off the island,” Taylor said, quoting the popular show “Survivor.” “Once a GBG, always a GBG.”
“It is a sisterhood,” Kendall said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Balloons mark 35 years of business during the last day at Got Beauty in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024.
The world, and the beauty industry, are different today than they were 35 years ago, Taylor said. Most of those changes have been for the better. “We used to feel very pigeonholed into a classic, sort of avant-garde notion” of beauty, she said.
Beauty standards are no longer so culturally restrictive, she said. Now, “we are able to really explore who we are creatively, and how we would like to express and adorn ourselves.”
Other changes are harder to adapt to. Current store manager Kaycee Nipper said the last decade, and especially the last five years, shook the industry to its core. Salons couldn’t take clients in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. People now turn to TikTok for beauty trends and tutorials. The attitude is much more “do-it-yourself,” Nipper said.
Got Beauty has adapted to each change, Nipper said. Losing the physical space in Sugar House is just another evolution.
[READ: Utah beauty industry needs a makeover, regulators say. Some cosmetologists just want a trim.]
And the closing is not a firm “goodbye,” Taylor said. “Just a transition into something more current. Something new.”
Got Beauty will remain active on social media so clients and customers can follow their stylists into their next chapters. Taylor owns two other stores in Oregon, which will stay open and sell some of their products online.
Beauty is in Taylor’s blood. Her grandmother, Margine Harding, helped formulate Redken and ran the makeup department for Warner Bros. studios, “back when they had things like makeup departments,” Taylor said. Her father Rick followed suit and opened Utah’s first retail beauty supply chain, Taylor Maid Beauty Supply, in 1975.
“In those early years I would drive straight through to California and back every weekend to bring the top beauty products in the country to my customers in Utah,” he reminisced on the website for his Provo and Orem stores.
Beauty “is all he ever did,” Taylor said of her father, adding she also “never wanted to do anything else.”
Except “maybe be a pilot,” the psuedo retiree said. Taylor got her pilot’s license on her 50th birthday, she said, and doesn’t know what she’ll try next.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
