RocHAUS Collective on Monroe Ave. is a combination of diverse perspectives and talents, with an emphasis on design, creativity and community. The result is an experience that uplifts and connects people.
Founder and Owner Toni Coleman says this article won’t capture the feeling at RocHAUS. To understand, you have to experience firsthand her salon, which is about relationships as much as it is blow outs, hair color and cuts.
Customers gather at a communal table; they read books, talk–they connect. They benefit from the toxin-free products stylists use, environmentally safe, locally made items for sale. With organic textiles, soy and coconut wax candles from Rochester Candle Co. or healing balm made of goat milk and New Zealand Manuka Honey from Honeoye Remedies, Coleman strives to combine clean, natural products that ease people’s toxic burden.
Coleman is compassionate, as a designer and business owner, starting with the collection of stylists she brought together at RocHAUS. They were orphans, Coleman says, after their salon closed down. That’s the reason the Collective was formed.
“I don't like the whole competition (thing). I'm about collaboration. Each person has a different gift,” Coleman says. “We all have an assignment and we all bring something different to the table. There's enough for everybody.”
As optimistic as Coleman tends to be, even she failed to imagine the success RocHAUS would have. Interestingly, she says, the success, the partners and clients, ended up finding her.
When she decided to open RocHAUS, Coleman was 55; she had no money saved; she never took a business course, and yet everything she needed to make the business a success, seemed to come to her.
Coleman grew up with very little support, but she thinks the naysayers she encountered helped lead her to success. She had a mother who believed in her–and she believed in herself. “I can write my own story,” she decided when she opened RocHAUS. The struggles she endured along the way, if anything, helped bring RocHAUS to life.
“I love rocks and I love natural stone and wood. Again, I am that artist and crafts(person). And it's funny, what I love about rocks is they're ordinary elements of sand and sediment. It doesn't become something extraordinary until it is heated up, until there’s this deep pressure, something beautiful comes out,” Coleman says. “That’s when ‘Roc’ came to me. It was like, ‘Oh my God, that's it!’ Our beauty comes through all these hardships and these trials. I (chose) ‘HAUS’ because I wanted a safe haven, an oasis for women.”
Coleman is a deep thinker, a critical thinker. She loves color, design, cuisine and connecting people.
“And I just love how everybody's got a story. Most people think we're just these ordinary people, but I think humans are extraordinary, especially women. Especially women! And until we sit down and reflect over our journey and where we've been and where we're going, sometimes we don't understand all of that.”
Small acts of kindness, words of support, connection, Coleman says, is what clients are still craving after COVID. RocHAUS Collective is meant to inspire that just like Coleman does naturally.
“We live in such an ageist society and specifically for women, they want to kind of put you on the shelf. Men get finer and better; women are put out to pasture,” Coleman says. “And so what I love about this journey and what I tell people is if it can happen for me, it can happen for anybody.”
"I am the captain of my ship. I don't have to let someone else tell me what my worth is."