About Courtney Byrd

You trust us with your hair and your skin, and you probably even divulge some of your biggest secrets to your stylist sometimes (don’t worry, our lips are sealed!)… But how much do you know about the salon where you spend about 45 minutes every 6 weeks? Here you’ll find the answers to five of the most basic, most-asked questions by our clients, both old and new:

“How long has MFX been here?”

MFX opened its doors in 1991 on Guadalupe Street by Jacalyn Luth. In 2002, MFX’s current owners, Javier Herrera and Chris Murphy, opened the South Congress location with Circle C following in 2006, and we’ve been “keeping Austin beautiful” ever since!

“How many people work for this company?”

We are a small, tight-knit family, usually consisting of between 25-40 members. We laugh, we cry, we bicker, and we do it all together… and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Do you only use Aveda products?”

For skin and hair care – yes. Aveda partners with salons that “share [their] vision and respect for the Earth, passion for the best creative and technical work, and nurturing, high-touch care.” We support this mission so entirely that we only feature Aveda for skin and hair care (plus, when a product is so amazing, why try anything else?). We do, however, feature OPI nail color (SoCo only), as well as seasonal or otherwise temporary inventory of other products, such as jewelry by local designers or clothing by indigenous tribes.

“Why did I get SoCo/Circle C if I called my specific location’s phone number?”

We do have separate phone numbers for each physical location, but we have our phone lines set up so that the lines ring at each location simultaneously. This allows our Guest Care Coordinators to not only answer your call more quickly, especially during high traffic times, but they are also equipped to edit appointment and client information for both salons. Just another way we implement our core value of “teamwork!”

“How hard is it to get an appointment?”

Like many businesses, we do have our high volume times (some Saturdays may book out weeks in advance… and around the holidays, some clients start booking in October!). BUT, we always do our best to make sure you get the first appointment available at a time that work best for you. We also make sure we give you every opportunity possible to get an appointment; we provide chairside pre-booking with every appointment, send our e-mail-list clients last minute appointment spots and also have a running wait list for any day that’s booked solid, in case there is a last minute cancellation.

Salon specialization is the practice of  creating special teams around cutting and coloring in an effort to allow each stylist to specialize in their respective area.   Specialization isn’t anything new.  Typically you’ll find specialized salons in top tier operations that are obsessed with customer service, whose focus is on excellence, and are incredibly team-oriented.   Maximum FX is a specialized salon.

If we’re being honest, of course we benefit from being specialized.  It helps us to book appointments with more flexibility, allowing us to service more clients and offer a broader range of service availability. Speciazlization also allows us to embody one of our core values: Teamwork. When one team member is falling behind on timing, there’s another one available and waiting to help them out. We can rely on each other, and trust in each other’s skills.

But if we’re being even more honest, the benefits YOU receive from specialization in the salon far outweigh ours.

Specializing allows stylists to excel in their desired skill by achieving higher education, like this cutting class led by Christine Zilinski.

Specialization allows you to receive the absolute best services MFX can offer.

Specialization allows us to offer you the best services possible from the best-trained and most-specialized stylists available. From the beginning, our stylists get to choose their area of specialization and commit to doing the work they love. This soon becomes evident in the results they produce, the investment they make in their craft and the continued education they seek in order to hone their skills even further. Ever heard the expression “Jack of all trades, master of nothing?” At MFX, our stylists are masters in their specialization, whether it be cutting or coloring.

In addition to getting the best possible service and results, you also share one of our benefits: flexibility and availability in scheduling! Some color and cut combination services can take up to THREE HOURS! That’s an entire afternoon that would need to be available for one specific stylist. With a demand for a long appointment, availability can sometimes be a nightmare, pushing your color or cut out two, three, maybe even four weeks!  Combine this with a demanding work schedule or children’s school demands, and we’d only see you twice a year! With specialization, the necessary time for each individual stylist is greatly reduced, giving you a much greater chance of getting your cut and color when you need it at the best time for you.   It’s not about us, it’s about YOU.

Sure, specialization means that sometimes another stylist will blow-dry your hair, or rinse out your color, but rest assured that you can trust their skills as well. All of our stylists must be skill certified on all of the services we offer in the training process. Not only does this ensure that they are able to provide you exceptional results, but that the results will reflect the superior skills of one another. However, if there’s a certain way you like your bangs dried or your favorite stylist does this “thing” during your shampoo that feels soooo good, let us know! Our stylists are more than happy to share their skills with each other. What’s better than one stylist giving you an awesome blowout juuuust the way you like it? Another one able to do the exact same thing.  We share this bit information not to convince you that this is a better way to provide services, but instead, to inform you why we’ve chosen to operate this way.    That’s not to say that salons that do not specialize are inferior.   Specialization works for us, and we’ve seen better results all the way around.