The Xtreme Lashes® service is often seen as a balance between health and beauty. Our industry attracts those in the medical field and those who work in beauty. It’s a service that attracts those who want to enhance their looks for cosmetic reasons and those who need to compensate for a lack of lashes caused by health reasons. No one exemplifies this balance between the two worlds of health and beauty better than Katherine Elliott.

Katherine has been a resident of the San Antonio, TX area since the age of 13, currently living there with her husband of 2 years and a daughter of 20 nearby. She is a trained Paramedical Esthetician. After completing three years of college coursework towards a BSN she decided to change her focus to include more of the beauty side of the health industry. Her esthetics training was completed at the San Antonio Beauty College and she has now accumulated over 18 years of experience as an Esthetician, with more than 9 of those as a Clinical Esthetician. While working in a salon environment her interest in the beauty side developed even more. She happened upon an opportunity to work with Hawaiian Tropic as a Territorial Sales Rep and jumped at the chance. The next three and a half years were spent working tirelessly to promote the beauty brand and sidelining as a freelance commercial makeup artist. It was during a commercial shoot that she first became aware of eyelash extensions and started on the path to her future.

“One of the talent asked if I had heard about lash extensions,” she recalls. With her medical background and experience, Katherine was hesitant about getting involved with a service performed around the eyes. Still, she was intrigued and spent the next year researching different eyelash extension companies. She made the conscious decision to train with Xtreme Lashes® after encountering two very different articles. The first was a story by an eyelash company that she says, “trashed all their competitors.” The second, and ultimately deciding factor, was an article posted on the Xtreme Lashes® website by Jo Mousselli, examining the safety of the Xtreme Lashes® products and procedure from a medical standpoint. “The statements came off as factual information that she was sharing. The thing that was stressed over and over was the desire to maintain the safety and integrity of the industry,” she says. “I saw that and decided, ‘I’m doing it’”.

Katherine signed up for a March 2007 workshop with Xtreme. As fate would have it, Hawaiian Tropic announced plans to sell the company shortly after she completed her training with Xtreme Lashes®. Katherine was told her job was no longer guaranteed so on June 1st she tendered her resignation to the company and went full force into her new career as an Xtreme Lashes® Stylist. “I love it. Love my career, love what I do. It’s the last thing I’ll ever do in my life,” she says.

Katherine is not only a career Lash Stylist but is now a business owner, too, applying Xtreme Lashes® out of Couture Lash Boutique in San Antonio. In an area where the estimated poverty level is more than 65% of the population, she has achieved an amazing success with a profitable business targeting a high end clientele. While she admits it was a bit of a struggle to educate locals about the service and what set it apart from other lash options, she’s happy to say it was worth the effort. She kept her advertising efforts focused on her market and gained additional exposure through charitable donations of lash applications to organizations like Transplants for Children and Brighton School, which both provide assistance to special needs children.

Katherine and Couture Lash Boutique are now running strong and well past the struggle stage. “In the last 6 months my business has tripled or quadrupled,” she tells us. People are starting to be more educated and informed. Most of her business now comes from referrals, she says. Clients of Couture Lash Boutique can get a free refill with every client referral and the program has spawned some avid supporters who never pay for their fills!

One client, who has become a habitual visitor to Couture, laughingly told Katherine: “Before we get started I just have to thank you. My last 2 dates were because of my lashes. Two gentlemen came up to me and complemented me on my lashes. One said ‘I just have to tell you, you have the most gorgeous eyes. Your lashes are amazing.’ Both encounters turned into dates!”

Katherine has been featured on Great Day San Antonio and in San Antonio Woman Magazine twice. She plans to expand in the coming year to accommodate even more clients by adding an additional two Xtreme Lashes® Stylists and securing a larger building. She says she feels incredibly blessed to have found Xtreme. “Even today, two years later, I’ve yet to see another company address maintaining the safety and integrity of the industry. Jo and Noor’s absolute commitment to it are constantly evident,” she explains. “Plus, there’s the Customer Service. It’s the bloodline of any industry and Xtreme’s is second to none. There’s 100% attention, whether you’re a new client or an existing one, every question is answered.”