One of West Lothian’s oldest and best-loved beauty salons is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
Images Face and Body Clinic in Bathgate is celebrating 40 successful years of helping clients to look their best.
Images came from humble beginnings when beauty therapist Karen Begg opened her first salon working from one room at home in Bathgate at the tender age of 19 after gaining internationally recognised qualifications at the prestigious Mary Reid International School of Beauty.
After moving from Karen’s home salon to shop premises in Bathgate Karen had another move before Images finally settled 18 years ago in its permanent home - the former Kingsgate Medical Centre in Bathgate’s King Street.
Over the years Karen herself has won numerous Business Awards including the Shona Sibbald Women in Business Award and a West Lothian Women in Business Special Achievement Award.
The Business has also won Awards such as Best Bathgate Business through The Edinburgh Business Awards and Best Beauty Salon. Karen puts the businesses’ continued award success down to the
hard work and professionalism of every member of her team.
Staff are continually updating their skills which they love and Karen makes sure the business keeps up to date with the very latest innovations.
However, Karen does research everything thoroughly before introducing anything new.
And this philosophy has paid off as she still has clients coming to Images 40 years on and now their own children, and even grandchildren are customers.
Karen has lived and worked in Bathgate for over 45 years and says she is proud to be part of Bathgate’s thriving community and is always grateful to locals and to those who travel from afar for her services.
As with so many businesses, when covid hit, the effect on Images was devastating Images having to close on several occasions, then being severely restricted in what services they could carry out.
However, Karen and the team took the time away from work to think over the direction which the business should go in as things got back to some normality.
As advanced skin treatments and hair removal treatments are jointly Karen and her team’s passions it was decided to focus on these two areas and make the salon more clinic-based.
40 years on Karen remains as passionate about the Beauty Business as she has always been.
She said: “Although times are uncertain at the moment, and we are still recovering from the impact of covid financially, I am positive about the future and looking forward to seeing what it will bring. “Going into recession is, of course, worrying and some businesses will not survive which is terrible.
“But having gone through two previous Recessions here at Images we are confident we will weather the storm.”
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