Caterina di Biase is a bit of a dark horse. Under the radar for such a long time, she was suddenly catapulted into the limelight last year after picking up not one, but two Australian Hairdresser of the Year awards, including the big gong at Hair Expo. Sitting up there amongst all the A-listers, the industry was asking: Who is Caterina di Biase? In true country girl style, Caterina took the bull by the horns and was out to prove that she's so much more than pretty photos and an impressive resume. In fact, she might just be one of the hardest working female stylists this industry has ever seen. But one thing's for sure, this quiet achiever isn't staying silent anymore. Caterina's had the sweet taste of success - and she wants more. By Jenny Burns.

Caterina is the first to admit that hairdressing is her life. She works six days a week and has done for the last 15 years. She gives herself Sundays off - providing she's not needed at one of the three Heading Out Hair & Beauty salons in Melbourne that she manages alongside her long-time mentor and partner Anthony Martino. Caterina sports a serious hardcore work ethic - a trait she reckons has something to do with growing up in the country as the eldest of three girls - and having to be the boy her father always wanted.

"I grew up in the Yarra Valley, about 90 minutes outside Melbourne," Caterina explains. "I have two sisters, so there were four females in the house, poor dad! We grew up on a farm - we used to breed horses and cattle - and being the eldest in the family, I was a real country girl. I was always out and about - I was dad's little boy basically. We were always riding horses, moving cattle, driving tractors, all that sort of thing. We also had a market garden. So naturally, hard work has never, ever worried me. It's part of my nature."

Despite working hard on the land, Caterina says that for as long as she can remember, she was always fascinated with makeup and beauty. She loved doing colours and manicures on her sisters. Her aim in life was to be a beautician. Twenty years ago, to be a beauty therapist you also had to be a qualified hairdresser, as young Caterina soon found out when she went to colleges to enquire on the course of action for her beautician career. Her options were to do an apprenticeship or a one-year short-cut course. Her parents encouraged Caterina to do the short course, offering to support her and as is the Italian way, open a salon for her once she was finished, keeping their eldest daughter close to home and employed. But Caterina refused her parents' offer to open a business after completing her course. She was destined for bigger things.

"Once I started hairdressing, I never really looked back," she recalls. "I didn't really ever go into beauty. I mean, we had to do a facial in our course and I was always in the beauty room and I learnt a lot, but I never ever pursued it. For me, it was all about the hair."

Completely dedicated and conscientious from day one, Caterina used to catch a bus at 6.30am from her home in Lilydale, then an hour on the train to trade school at Hillsville. At night, she'd do the 90-minute return journey home, mostly getting in after dark around 7pm. Caterina was head of her class and was even chosen to be part of the art team at college. Very competitive by nature, winning was all she ever knew.

Caterina started working at a salon with a girlfriend soon after being qualified, moving from part-time to full-time and up the ranks from junior to senior stylist. She soon became bored, so got a job at another salon closer to the city. Not long after, Caterina travelled around Europe for three months, visiting relatives and joining a Contiki Tour before ending up in the US, where she completed a Vidal Sassoon cutting course in LA.
"Once I went to Europe, I realised that there was a lot more out there in the world than where I was," Caterina says. "I changed the complete direction of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to be during that trip.

Before that, I spent a lot of time with horses and competing. I loved my hair world; I was very passionate and used to go to hair shows and do training - but I had a different perspective until I went to Europe. I realised that there was a big wide world out there and that I needed to get behind what I do for a living."When Caterina returned from the US, complete with her new Sassoon haircut, a new wardrobe and a serious new attitude, she was introduced to a husband and wife hairdressing duo who ran a salon called Fran Capelli in Melbourne's Box Hill. It was a completely different type of salon to what Caterina was used to. Owners Frank and Anna had separate stylists and colourists, they had a receptionist, and they even had a training academy. Although the company didn't have a position on the floor at the time, Caterina took the only job going at the time - receptionist - just to get her foot in the door.

"I just wanted to get in," she says. "Being a receptionist wasn't really my thing, but I milked it. I watched, I listened, I learnt and I trained. I was still training in hairdressing after hours, even though I wasn't physically on the floor working as a stylist. Soon after, an opportunity arose when a colourist left and Frank trained me in colour. I'd never worked with foils because at trade school they didn't do foils, just the cap, so Frank taught me how to foil. We did cutting training. We did seminars and I emceed them. I did the bookings for some of his shows, even some of his country shows. We'd do mailouts and I'd ring regional salons to tell them about our seminars and take bookings. Everything I could get my hands on, I did. It was a very progressive salon for the time."But soon the recession hit Australia and things started to tighten. Gone were the shows and education tours. Businesses changed - they started to focus on business and training and service. The big ego hairdressers were out of a job if they weren't being productive, making way for the people in the salon that were working hard, had a good clientele and were punctual and reliable - and I was one of them. I was always there, always training, always working. When an opportunity came up, I would take it. Never say no. That's always been my philosophy because I wanted to learn, I wanted to grow and I knew I had to keep going forward." Caterina stayed at Fran Capelli for a couple of years, working her way up the ladder and taking in as much as she could along the way. But she was also a girl from the country, throwing herself into the excitement of Melbourne's nightlife with the same enthusiasm as her fervour for hairdressing.

"This was the 80s, so it was all about big hair, big shoulder pads, and the big nightclub scene," Caterina laughs. "I was the first one out of my Italian family to have a car, so I used to take all of my cousins out and corrupt them! Just kidding, I was a very naïve country girl, but boy did we have some fun.

"In those days, Lygon Street was the place to be. We'd go there about 1.30am for pizza and coffee after being in a nightclub, because that's where everyone would hang out. Being Italian, there would always be other cousins or males with us to protect us of course - they had no hope in hell of controlling us girls but it made our parents feel better! We were harmless anyway, just doing the usual things kids do at that age."

Then one night whilst hanging out at Lygon Street, Caterina met Anthony Martino. She says she remembers it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

"It was the middle of winter and he had a long trench coat on. The reason I noticed him was because it was freezing and he was eating ice cream. I said to him: ‘Aren't you cold? It's 2am and you're eating ice-cream?' I was with a whole bunch of girls and he was just chatting to us, being the perfect gentleman that he is. That's how I discovered that he was a hairdresser and he had a salon in Brunswick Street then. So every time we went into this café in Lygon Street, he would be there because he was very good friends with the owners. He would talk to me about his business and what I was doing - at that stage I was still working with Fran Capelli. Then one day he asked me if he ever got stuck, would I help him out. I said to him: ‘Of course if you really get stuck I will help you', because I'm very much that type of person. Within six months, I'd decided to leave Fran Capelli - I thought I was pretty good then and could get a job anywhere! So I was going for interviews and having a look around. I bumped into Anthony one evening and told him that it was time for me to move on and he said: ‘why don't you come and talk to me?' So I did and we chatted and he asked me to go and work for him. He wanted me to bring my skills to his business, train up his team and help bring his salon back to where it was before. He'd previously had two or three salons but had downscaled to just the one when the recession hit. So I handed in my resignation."

The year was 1990 and so began Caterina's life at Heading Out. Eager to change the world and put her many skills into action at her new abode, within 12 months the salon was renovated and the business was in the process of being revamped. It was being transformed from more of a barber shop vibe where the predominantly male clientele would hang out or drop in for a quick trim, to a salon with a wider variety of services, including beauty. The staff were undergoing training and more staff were being added to the mix. Those that didn't like the new regime left the company and the ones left behind, (including long-time employee Grace Romanin, who's still with the company today), embraced the changes with open arms.

"Tony said to me: ‘Work here for three months and then we'll have a chat'," Caterina recalls. "So three months to the day, I'm walking into the salon, he's walking out, and I said: ‘We need to have a chat.' Tony said: ‘Yes, I was waiting for it. What do you want?' So we went out and talked about what I wanted. According to Tony, my quote at the time was: ‘I want to be at the top and I want to have my name in lights.' He said: ‘Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that?' And I said: ‘Yes, that's what I want.' Then he said: ‘That's going to be a lot of hard work and you've got to be prepared to do that. I can help you.'"

So Caterina started training with Tony. He wasn't working on the floor, but managing the business and training staff in areas such as service and customer etiquette. Despite the economic climate, the pair were able to make changes, such as price increases, slowly and without completely alienating their bread and butter clientele. But it served as a warning that times were a changing at Heading Out, and eventually, the old clientele whittled away.

Things were also changing for the headstrong Caterina. Her new hairdressing apprenticeship was about to begin.
"When I first started training with Tony, it was all about: ‘You don't argue with me, you just listen to what I say and do what I tell you.' That was very hard for me - I'm so pig-headed and the head of my family - so I was used to ruling the roost. With Tony being Italian and so old-fashioned and strict and business-like, that made it even harder.

"But I learnt and I grew. Tony was great because he got people in who were better than us to train us. Then I employed people who were better than me and learnt from them. It evolved. A lot of people feel threatened by people who are better than them. Not me - I employ them and learn as much from them as I can. It won't take me long and I'll catch them. That's my nature - my killer instinct!"

Caterina says that the real turning point for Heading Out was a huge charity show the team organised for kids on the street. She'd heard someone talking about how they did a charity event and how it was a really good thing for their business, so she thought: ‘We could do that. Why don't we?'

"I thought it would be a win/win situation, both for us and for the charity," Caterina explains. "It started off as a fashion parade and from there, it turned into a massive production. We worked on it for months. We had fashion, theatre, music; then I got in a choreographer so we had dancers. We hired out a nightclub and sold more than 500 tickets. Everyone donated their services. We only made a few thousand dollars, but it was the PR and relationship building that was fantastic. The whole vibe of our clients changed too. Our existing clients loved it and we also attracted a whole lot of new people who came to the event - they wanted to support us because they thought we did a great thing."

The next pivotal moment for Heading Out was the L'Oréal Colour Trophy - something that Caterina describes as the ‘real clincher' for the business - but also marked the beginning of Caterina's rise to fame.

Heading Out won the state finals for Colour Trophy in 1997 and began to realise the power of competitions and what winning awards could do for business. Nine years ago, this was a time in Australian hairdressing when there weren't a flurry of competitions in the marketplace, so the publicity and exposure Heading Out received made a huge impact on business, from their name being splashed across the media to the phone ringing off the hook from new potential clients.

"The other thing that happens is that people want to work for you," Caterina adds. "They think that because you did it, you're going to make them do it too. There's good and bad things with competitions - that's the bad side, because people try to use you and abuse you and you have to be careful of that."
Heading Out won the national finals for L'Oréal Colour Trophy in 1999 and again in 2000, increasing its profile in the marketplace even further. Next came international awards and competitions, and then on the home front, Hair Expo.

"I remember being at Hair Expo one year," Caterina recalls, "and I got a copy of the dossier and questionnaire from the entry form for the Hair Expo awards. I took one look at it and I put it down. I never looked at it again for a while because it was so full-on and detailed. I just didn't have the time or resources to even put an entry in. But from there we kept doing L'Oréal Colour Trophy and we won some other awards, like the Next Look Award and so forth and it was just a part of the process. We got a PR company, then someone else to help with the marketing, the graphics - and by then it wasn't so bad because I had people who could help me do it.

"Our first submission to the Hair Expo awards was in 2001 - I remember because we could use the national Colour Trophy win in our resume. We achieved finalist in Colourist of the Year.

"But what do competitions do to you? Give you the sweet taste of success. It's like a drug, an addiction, and costs you a fortune just like any drug or addiction! Tony says: ‘You cost me a fortune!'"

There's no doubt about it, Caterina di Biase is one determined woman. When she sets her sights on something, she won't rest until she's done her damndest to get it. Such unwavering resolution is certainly admirable in a business sense and is definitely one of the reasons why the Heading Out group is so successful.

"I'm not just a hairdresser - that's not what I do," Caterina explains. "I don't just do hair on the floor. Only as of last week, I cut back one day. I was still doing five days a week on the floor, plus one day in the office. I've worked six days a week for years - I'm a workaholic. I'm very much on the floor and in the business and I work between three stores. When we open a new store, I go in as a ‘brander', using the power of my name, and work there every day until it gets up and running. I help the staff with everything, from power points that aren't working through to stock that hasn't arrived. I manage the new store - the staff are generally overwhelmed with everything, but I can just go in and within a few hours I can get them organised. They say to me: ‘How do you do that? And I say: ‘Because that's what I do. I'm a delegator.' I do all the hiring, the firing, I do all the meetings with the companies. Anything that comes in or out of the business has to go through head office, which basically is me.

"I'm very much a systems person and even though each of our three salons has its own character and feel, we have systems for everything. When it comes to a new salon, Tony does the figures and I deal with the architect and do the drawing. He's the visionary and the entrepreneur, then I turn it into reality for him."

Heading Out currently employs 70 staff - of which Caterina is one - and has four salons in Melbourne. Three of the salons are co-owned by long-time staff members and this style of co-ownership expansion is something that Tony Martino plans for Heading Out's future. There are plans for around eight or so new salons to be opened in the not-so-distant future - but rather than rush the expansion, for Tony and Caterina it's more about keeping a boutique level of service and a certain exclusivity than achieving ‘franchise growth', which often kills a prestige hair brand.

The group is also about to open a new education academy in July, not only providing staff with consistent on-site training, but a broader range of career options within the hairdressing education stream. This year alone, Heading Out will have five other senior employees with new career development in the Academy, which will have them teaching new hair courses for both international students and local Certificate 3 and Diploma courses. It's a clever strategy by Tony Martino - retaining his highly trained staff who are ready for a new challenge, but perhaps not interested in the stress and management of salon ownership. Here, they can remain employed by Heading Out, but have much more interesting careers structured around what they love - hair and teaching.

Does Caterina have any plans to co-own a new Heading Out salon? No thanks. She prefers to split her time across all of the salons and with the new academy opening shortly, she'll be adding education and photographic work to the mix.

"I have one of those brains that never stops," Caterina laughs. "Tony's just as bad, but in a different way. Because we're so busy during the day, we often don't get a chance to talk. It was 11.30 last night and he was at me. And I'm saying: ‘Tony, I've got to get up at 6am to get to the airport. Shut up!"

"I'm a systems person. Tony taught me that. I've always done things my way, but I learnt that to be more efficient, I had to systemise. When I was training with Tony, I would attend seminars and things like that, and then I would return home and say: ‘We've got to do this and do that' and I was full of ideas. Grace would roll her eyes and Tony would just look at me and say: ‘Here we go...' I was - and still am - an education junkie. My motto was: always got to go, always got to see, always got to do.

"The other thing that I'm a stickler for is that ‘rules are rules'. It's got to be the same for everybody. That has been to my detriment sometimes because it is hard to be so regimented. And because you are the deliverer, the buck stops with you. You know the saying good cop/bad cop? I'm the bad cop and Tony's the good cop. I don't bend. I didn't get here by bending. I got here by hard work and listening and pushing the bar and wanting to be better."

Such dedication has brought Caterina success, but has also meant making sacrifices in her life to completely devote herself to her career.

"What I do and the way I go about things - I have to understand that there aren't many people who can do that and are willing to sacrifice their lives for it," she says. "I don't have children. My career is my ultimate. I'm not married - not that I think that's a bad thing. I never planned it that way, it's just happened. I always said that I'd never marry until I was 35 so I could focus on my career, and now I'm 41. I always wanted to have children and I haven't, but I don't really feel as though I've missed out on something. Not really.
"After all, I've got 70 of them at the salons, haven't I?" she laughs.

Caterina can be pretty hardcore when it comes to talking about her passion for hairdressing, but she's also first to admit she loves a laugh and having a good time - something that has gotten her into trouble in the past.
"Because I have a full plate and my mind runs at a million miles an hour, I tell you like it is and that's that. We might be talking about white wine and that's fine thanks very much, but now I want red wine - and everyone else is still on white wine. I've got ten things on my agenda, so I move on and quickly. Some people can take that as being abrupt and aggressive, whereas the way I see it, I'm just straight.

"Look, I'm a really fun-loving person who likes having a party and carrying on, but I also love my job. Sometimes when you have a business and a reputation, you do need to be careful and be aware. And there are things that you learn along the way that reminds you not to let your guard down.

"You have to be aware of what you're saying too. I didn't learn that overnight, that's for sure. That comes from years and years of making mistakes!"

Yes, that mouth that's so often sporting a grin from ear to ear - and could win gold if there was an Olympic event for talking - has earned Caterina the nickname of ‘bucket-mouth', something that she's forever getting teased about.

"Tony has always said to me: ‘Do you have to tell everyone everything?'" Caterina smiles good-humouredly. "'Can't you just zip it? You don't have to tell everyone the colour of your underpants.' Years ago he said I was a ‘bit of a bucket-mouth'. That's how the whole thing started."
 
Caterina does love a laugh, but she's deadly serious when it comes to the business of the Heading Out brand - and her own profile. As part of her Australian Hairdresser of the Year award last year, she won a spot on stage at Salon International in London - and loved every bit of it.

"You need to reap your awards - does that make sense?" she says. "You need to make the most out of it and milk it for everything its worth. When I went to London, apart from Benni Tognini, I was the only Australian performing at Salon. Benni was there under another banner, but I was there under my banner, the Heading Out banner. I said to Tony: ‘We've got to work really hard to get back here again next year', because expanding into the international market is high on the list of my priorities.

"I think I've got a lot to offer a prospective international audience," Caterina adds. "I'm an all-rounder, whereas a lot of hairdressers at the top are not. I still cut and colour on the floor, I do hair up very well and I can do session work as well. I offer that I can demonstrate lots of different things in lots of ways. I'm also a woman and I'm Australian. Being female, you get treated differently, especially by people high up in the hierarchy. The industry at the top is dominated by men - it's a real boy's club, so we have to fight harder and work really hard as women.

"It's also about the Australian approach. In Europe, the market is dominated by Vidal Sassoon and Mahogany, Errol Douglas, all of those guys. It's their playing field. I'm coming into their playing field. I either make them look great or I can put some pressure on them to be greater. And that's what I'm there to do. I'm there to make myself greater and if you're there to be great, then you need to make sure that you are - because I'm going to make you look bad otherwise. A lot of these big names talk about when they come to Australia, how they have to up their grade. It's something they really need to plan, to work on. They say: ‘You guys are on the edge.' And it's very true. I look at it the other way - when I go to London, I've got to do the same thing. I've got to be on the edge. I need to prove myself even more so. They've been in the limelight for years and years. I'm the new kid on the block."

So with nearly 12 months gone since Caterina took out the big Hair Expo gong last year, she's back as a finalist for 2008, alongside former winners Shane Henning and Jayne Wild and newcomer Joey Scandizzo. Is she feeling the pressure?

"Now that we're back to four finalists rather than the ten finalists as per the last few years, to me I feel it means that there's not that much difference between us," Caterina says. "It's quite tight. The pressure is on us more with four, whereas with ten finalists, you could hide a little bit more. Last year for me was very, very strange. I never went up there thinking that I was going to win. I always thought that Brad Ngata was going to win again. I thought that because I was from Melbourne and I didn't have the media contacts, I didn't have a chance - you know, all those sort of thoughts. But I have to say that as soon as I got to Sydney, so many people kept coming up to me, saying: ‘Caterina, I love your work.' Tony says he reckoned I had it in the bag, but I'm not that cocky. I'm never that cocky.

"Winning last year? I enjoyed it immensely. This year, the pressure is on me because I am the reigning champ and a finalist again. But you know, I think I'm giving them a run for their money and I'm quite proud of that. Even if I don't win, I'm happy to say that if you're going to take it from me, you've had to work hard to do it." It sounds like things just keep falling into place for Caterina di Biase. With her ‘look out world, here I come' drive and a schedule that sounds like it's the work of three or four stylists rolled into one, does she have any time for a bit of R&R?

"When I do have time off, I spend it with my family, because I don't get to see them much," she says. "I usually have three or four weeks off after Christmas and I've got a beach house down on the Peninsula, so I love to get down there. I don't have horses anymore so I can't get to the country that way. I just like getting out of the city, to relax and do nothing. I love to wine and dine and all that. And of course, shopping's obviously a hairdresser's pastime! But mostly it's precious time with my family."

When I ask Caterina what her family thinks of her success, she grins broadly. Just goes to show, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.

"Let me explain," she says. "When the culture Yearbook 07/08 first came out, I wrapped it up at Christmas time and I gave it to mum on Christmas day. She looked at the cover and I said: ‘I did that mum.' She said: ‘Wow, that's fantastic!' Then I opened it up and showed my family the story and the spread and they got all teary. It was really beautiful. I gave her some copies, because she has copies of a lot of my things - you know, one she might keep on the coffee table, another she'll give to a girlfriend perhaps. They're just so proud of me."