Malynda Vigliotti has always been obsessed with beauty. She worked at the Macy’s in Herald Square at their cosmet-ics counter and earned a Bachelor of Science De-gree in Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in their cosmetic and fragrance department.Vigliotti later went back to school to get her esthetician license.In 2008, Vigliotti opened Boom Boom Brow Bar, offering several wax-ing and tinting services.
Named after a childhood nickname in her fam-ily, Boom Boom opened right in the middle of the 2008 economic recession, and Vigliotti was initially worried about staying afloat during that time.“It was like one of those things where I was like, Oh my gosh this is a crisis, how am I going to do this? When opening a business in New York City, thought it would be busy first day,” said Vigliotti. “Truth be told, New Yorkers have tun-nel vision in going where they’re going and going to that place. It was com-pletely nerve-wracking.”
However, things re-ally started to pick up for Boom Boom in 2011. One of Vigliotti’s custom-ers who lived across the street from the store’s 7th Avenue location worked for the New York Times and asked if she could write something up about the brow bar.As the business contin-ued to grow, Boom Boom was caring for around 500 eyebrows a week and was able to move to a bigger space on Green-wich Avenue.
However, in March 2020 Boom Boom suffered the same fate as many other businesses in New York City and closed its doors on March 15.Vigliotti says that the struggles she faced with Boom Boom during the pandemic made her ques-tion if the shop was going to be able to stay open. Though Boom Boom was able to secure PPP loans, the store was competing with other businesses in the area like Shake Shack.However, it was im-portant to Vigliotti that if she could, she would keep the business going in New York City where it was first created.“It was a hope and a prayer. At a certain point I was wondering, is the business going to fail?” said Vigliotti. “When I am able to come back, if I can afford to stay, I am staying for commitment for the love of NYC. I was paying employees and not paying myself — I just want to be a part of the resurgence of New York City.”
With restrictions starting to ease, Boom Boom was able to re-open for business on July 6 with new protocols in place. Every employee is masked up and their workspaces are socially distanced from each other. Vigliotti prides the shop on being very clean for years prior to the pan-demic, and will be con-tinuing these protocols even after the COVID-19 pandemic is declared over.“
When you go to beauty school, 50% of the course is disinfecting and sanitation. One thing I’m proud of is that we’ve been really clean— we never double-dip in wax and use hand sanitizer, the only thing we had to adjust was social distanc-ing and wearing a mask,” said Vigliotti. “I can’t be-lieve we didn’t do that be-fore. After it ends, we’re still [wearing masks]. We didn’t get COVID, we didn’t get sick. It’s work-ing.”
Boom Boom recently celebrated 13 years in business on April 1, 2021. Though Vigliotti would have loved to celebrate Lucky 13 with a huge Boom Boom-style blow-out, she is happy that the store can still have a part in Manhattan’s commu-nity and has high hopes for the future.“All in all, this is sin-glehandedly my biggest accomplishment to be New Yorker, a small busi-ness owner, a woman, and to have done this on my own. It’s super excit-ing and I’m so proud,” said Vigliotti. “Through-out all of these years, we have been a part of the community, it’s such a great thing to be a part of.”
As for what the future holds for Boom Boom, the brow bar is launch-ing a new house-made eye product line, which Vigliotti developed while in quarantine.“I was not working for the first time since 16, so I really started to de-velop my own brow prod-uct line,” said Vigliotti. “It’s a clean, non-toxic, vegan, cruelty-free brow line. It got me thinking about personal health is-sues and how important health and wellness are right now.”
With the launch of the new brow line and the celebration of 13 years in business, Vigliotti hopes that New Yorkers can see how important it can be to take care of their eye-brows even during the pandemic.“We’re wearing masks indefinitely, so the eyes are all we see,” said Vi-gliotti. “Without being able to register a smile, brows are the only other feature on our face to convey an expression. Be-ing able to create beau-tiful brows with clean products is just better for everyone and the right thing to do!”Boom Boom Brow Bar is located at 30 Green-wich Avenue. For more information, visit www.boomboombrowbar.com.