18 August 2023
By Mark Aldrich
The lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) grows in mud, yet its blossom is universally regarded as beautiful, spiritual, and resilient, explains Nicole Heaton, the founder of Floating Lotus Lash Bar in New Paltz, so it seemed to be the perfect flower to serve as an emblem for a business that was born in a challenging year and has blossomed into a thriving cosmetic and medical esthetics practice in the heart of a newly thriving part of downtown New Paltz.
Yokel visited Nicole at her beautiful space on Church Street in July and discussed the challenges of entrepreneurship, the joy of building a team that is committed to one’s vision and contributes to it, and the range of services Floating Lotus offers.
Nicole is a Hudson Valley local with a lifelong passion for art and desire to learn how to pursue that passion. She enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where she “learned how to learn,” and after her four-year enrollment and honorable discharge, she started to study for her esthetician’s license. She started to work in a plastic surgeon’s office and also worked in a corporate environment, an experience that reinforced for her the sense that work as a medical esthetician would be more meaningful.
Nicole started her entrepreneurial journey in 2015 when she opened her first office in Highland as a side practice. She built the practice and realized in 2018 that the time was right to open a full-scale spa. Floating Lotus Lash Bar has proved its staying power here in New Paltz; it weathered the storm of the pandemic and continues to grow its client base.
She has clients who have had surgery or cancer treatments. They ask her, “Please make me whole again,” and one can tell from even a brief conversation with Nicole that this is a mission she treats with the greatest respect and dedication. It’s another reason the lotus is a perfect emblem for Nicole’s spa: lotus seeds are known to stay viable for as long as centuries, and may appear to be dry enough to be discarded when with some water and care they blossom and continue life. The lotus is a symbol in some cultures of longevity, resilience, and health as well as beauty.
As the culture has grown more aware of the importance of skincare, Floating Lotus Lash Bar offers a vast range of facials and skincare treatments to tackle specific concerns and to promote general health. Floating Lotus Lash Bar offers services that combine medical and holistic solutions for clients, cosmetic and medical esthetic treatments, and all with compassion for clients and for the environment—the products she uses are only high-end, medical, and vegan by design.
Everything for lashes and brows, waxing, sugaring, and a wide range of results-driven facials and skin treatments are services that New Paltz and Ulster County residents might once have traveled to a lash bar in Manhattan to receive, but we have a professional, licensed, Manhattan-quality spa in the center of New Paltz. Nicole is also a licensed PMU (permanent makeup) artist.
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The roots of the lotus often grow from riverbeds and extend a sturdy stem upward to the blossom at the surface. They are a bit of stability and beauty in a flowing, ever-changing river.
Floating Lotus Lash Bar sits on a stretch of Church Street that had once been so commercially quiet it was silent. I lived on the north section of Church Street for years in the 1990s and in conversation with Nicole, I realized that at that time I never even traversed the section between Main Street and North Front Street. Now, it is a bustling piece of New Paltz, with two booksellers, a chocolatier, several shops, restaurants, and Floating Lotus. Nicole is thrilled to be a part of a thriving business community in which the business owners root for each other and build the neighborhood together. Church Street businesses have hosted several street-wide open markets with more to come in the summer of 2023 and beyond.
Floating Lotus Lash Bar has a team that consists of Nicole, two licensed estheticians and a licensed cosmetologist. Her team members are not hired from a resumé, they pass an audition, and they become part of a team that finds and provides solutions to a wide range of client needs.
The complete list of services provided on the menu of Lashes and Brows, Body and Hair Removal, and Facials and Skincare numbers in the several dozen, and Nicole and her team consult with their clients to find the perfect service. One of her client testimonials speaks of the trust that her clients have in Nicole’s knowledge and compassion: “I went in thinking I wanted one type of facial, but trusted Nicole to decide what was best for my needs. I was NOT disappointed. I am going to be glowing at my sister’s wedding.”
A passion for art combined with a desire to use her vast knowledge of the many different routes to premium skin and hair care and unstinting compassion for her clients have turned Nicole Heaton’s vision into a New Paltz destination spa.
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The Floating Lotus Lash Bar also offers membership plans for its clientele. Visit their website for updated membership plans:
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Mark’s website: http://thegadabouttown.com/