Today we’d like to introduce you to Marissa Hutchison Murphy.
Hi Marissa, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My path to owning Collar & Comb Groomerie has definitely not been a straight line.
I grew up around entrepreneurship and business ownership. I’m a third-generation shareholder in a large family-owned company, and my dad also owns and operates his own separate business. Between the two, I grew up seeing different sides of what it means to own a business: the opportunities it can create, but also the responsibility, long hours, problem solving, and persistence required to keep something going. I don’t think I realized at the time how much that environment would influence me, but looking back, becoming a business owner probably wasn’t as surprising a path as it once seemed.
My own adult story started pretty young. I married my husband when I was 18, and shortly afterward he joined the United States Marine Corps. Much of my early adulthood was shaped by being a young military spouse and eventually becoming a mom. Military life teaches you quickly how to adapt. Your plans, your home, and sometimes your entire life can change based on circumstances outside of your control.
It was during that chapter of my life that I found veterinary medicine. I completed my veterinary assistant education and worked in the field, where I developed a foundation in animal health, behavior, handling, and patient care. My grooming experience at that time wasn’t the kind of grooming most people picture when they think of a salon. It was primarily medical and comfort-based grooming within veterinary medicine, helping animals who needed grooming for their health, hygiene, comfort, or medical care.
Eventually, family life took priority and I stepped away from the workforce for a period of time. When I was ready to return, I knew I wanted to come back to animal care, but I also wanted more flexibility for my family and the opportunity to create an environment of my own. I was especially interested in grooming because I believed there was room to create an experience centered around safety, individualized care, and the animal’s overall wellbeing.
That’s where Collar & Comb Groomerie entered my story.
Collar & Comb Groomerie was originally established by another local family as a pet boutique, with grooming added as the business evolved. Over time, grooming became an increasingly important part of what Collar & Comb Groomerie offered. When the opportunity arose for me to purchase the business, I saw tremendous potential in developing that side of it further and creating a more specialized grooming experience.
When I took ownership, I wasn’t coming from a traditional salon-grooming background. My experience was rooted in veterinary medicine and medical and comfort grooming, so animal health, safe handling, and recognizing the individual needs of the pet were naturally the lens through which I approached the profession.
I also had a lot to learn.
Over the years, I have invested heavily in continuing education, technique, equipment, products, behavior and handling, and developing my skills as a professional groomer. The groomer I am today is vastly different from the groomer who first took ownership of Collar & Comb Groomerie, and I’m proud of that growth. I think one of the most important things you can do in any animal-care profession is remain teachable. There is always another skill to improve and another way to provide better care.
At the same time, Collar & Comb Groomerie was evolving with me. We gradually transitioned from the boutique-centered model of its early years into the grooming-focused business we are today, with an emphasis on individualized care rather than simply moving as many dogs through the salon as possible.
I also wanted to create the kind of workplace I had needed earlier in my own life. Being a military spouse and mother had shown me how difficult it can be for women to build careers while also being the person their families depend on. I wanted women to be able to develop real professional skills and earn a living without being treated as though motherhood, caregiving, or having responsibilities outside of work made them less serious about their careers.
And then, of course, life continued happening while I was trying to build all of this.
We made it through COVID during the early years of my ownership. Not long afterward, my husband was involved in a serious accident that dramatically changed life for our family. There have been seasons when keeping a business operating while caring for my family felt nearly impossible, but Collar & Comb Groomerie continued to evolve through them.
Six years into my chapter of its story, Collar & Comb Groomerie looks very different from the business I purchased.
Our focus today is grooming, individualized care, animal health, behavior, safety, and building long-term relationships with our clients and their pets. I don’t want a dog to simply be an appointment on a schedule. I want us to know the animals in our care as individuals: what makes them nervous, what makes them comfortable, what works for them, what doesn’t, and when something about them seems different.
And in another unexpected turn, my career has now brought me back to veterinary medicine.
I currently work overnight in an emergency and specialty veterinary hospital, helping care for hospitalized and critically ill patients, while continuing to own and groom at Collar & Comb Groomerie. Returning to veterinary medicine has brought the two sides of my career together in a way I didn’t necessarily anticipate.
Groomers have an unusual opportunity in animal care because we put our hands and eyes on our patients regularly and often know their bodies incredibly well. We may notice changes in skin and coat, mobility, behavior, weight, masses, pain, or overall condition that aren’t obvious at home. Groomers aren’t veterinarians and shouldn’t try to be, but I believe an educated groomer can be an important part of an animal’s larger care team by recognizing changes and knowing when something warrants veterinary attention.
Being back in veterinary medicine has also reignited my desire to continue my education, and my goal is to become a Registered Veterinary Technician. At this point, I don’t really see grooming, veterinary medicine, and business ownership as three unrelated careers. They’ve become different parts of the same story.
Owning Collar & Comb Groomerie has also changed my definition of success. Earlier in my ownership, I thought success meant constant growth: more clients, more employees, more revenue, and a busier shop. Today, I think about it differently.
Success is sustainability. It’s doing work we’re proud of. It’s continuing to learn. It’s treating animals with patience and respect. It’s having clients who trust us with pets they consider family. And it’s building careers where the people who work here can be successful while still having lives and families of their own.
Collar & Comb Groomerie had a history before I became its owner, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to become part of that history. The last six years have been a period of tremendous evolution for both the business and for me. I’ve had the opportunity to take an existing local business in a new direction while becoming a better groomer, animal-care professional, and business owner along the way.
I don’t think that evolution is finished yet
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not! I think most small business owners would probably laugh a little at the idea of a “smooth road.”
I purchased Collar & Comb Groomerie with a background in veterinary medicine and medical and comfort grooming, but I was still very new to the larger professional grooming industry. So in the beginning, I was learning how to become a better groomer at the same time I was learning how to own and operate a business. Looking back, there were definitely moments of learning things the hard way.
Then came COVID. Like so many small businesses, we had to figure out how to keep moving through something none of us had ever experienced. Not long after that, my husband was involved in a serious accident, and our family’s entire world shifted. Trying to be a wife and mom, care for my family, and keep a business functioning at the same time was probably one of the hardest periods of my life.
Staffing has also been one of the biggest lessons for me. Grooming is incredibly skilled, physical work, and finding the right people is difficult. I’ve learned that growing a team isn’t just about filling positions. You can teach someone technique, but it is much harder to teach patience, good judgment, compassion, accountability, and the ability to recognize when an animal has had enough. Those things matter tremendously to me.
I’ve also had to learn that growth for the sake of growth isn’t necessarily success. For a long time, whenever something wasn’t working, my instinct was that we just needed to get busier, hire more people, or grow more. I think a lot of business owners fall into that trap. Eventually you realize that bigger and better aren’t always the same thing.
More recently, I’ve had to learn another difficult lesson: how to build a business that doesn’t require me to sacrifice myself to keep it alive. Animal care is physically demanding, whether I’m grooming or working in veterinary medicine, and I’ve had to become much more conscious of sustainability, both for myself and for the people who work with me.
There have absolutely been times when I’ve wondered if owning a business was worth how much of yourself it can consume. I think that’s something we don’t talk about enough. You can love what you’ve built and still be exhausted by the responsibility of carrying it.
But the difficult parts have also forced me to become much more intentional.
I care less now about looking successful from the outside. I care about whether we’re doing good work, whether the animals in our care are safe and treated kindly, whether our clients trust us, whether my team can be proud of what they do, and whether Collar & Comb Groomerie is something that can continue without everyone involved running themselves into the ground.
So no, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. There have been potholes, detours, and a few sections where I’m fairly certain there wasn’t actually a road at all. But every difficult season has taught me something about the kind of groomer, business owner, leader, and person I want to be
We’ve been impressed with Collar & Comb Groomerie , but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Collar & Comb Groomerie is a professional grooming salon in Spring Hill, Kansas, but what I really want people to understand about us is that we don’t believe a good groom is just about how a dog looks when they walk out the door.
Of course, we want them to look amazing! Grooming is both a skilled trade and an art, and our team takes a lot of pride in beautiful finished work. Over the years, I’ve worked incredibly hard to continue developing my own technical and creative grooming skills, and continuing education is something I believe strongly in for our entire team.
But how we get to that beautiful finished groom matters just as much to me.
Our approach is very individualized. Dogs aren’t interchangeable appointments. One dog may happily stand through an entire groom while another needs breaks, modified handling, a different drying method, fewer expectations that day, or sometimes for us to say, “This is enough for today.” We believe accommodating an animal is part of professional grooming. Our responsibility is to provide the best groom we safely and reasonably can, not force a pet through an experience simply to produce a perfect haircut.
My veterinary background has shaped that philosophy tremendously. Animal health, behavior, safe handling, sanitation, and recognizing changes in a pet’s condition are things I take very seriously. Now that I’m also working in emergency and specialty veterinary medicine again, that connection has become even stronger.
One area we’re particularly passionate about is skin and coat care, especially for doodles and other high-maintenance coat types. Doodles make up a significant part of modern grooming, and their coats can vary tremendously from dog to dog. We put a lot of emphasis on proper bathing, drying, coat preparation, product selection, brushing and maintenance, rather than treating the bath as simply the step that happens before the haircut.
Healthy skin and a properly cared-for coat are the foundation of a beautiful groom. We work with owners on realistic maintenance schedules and home care, and we try to educate without shaming people when a coat becomes difficult to maintain. Our goal is to find something that works for the dog, the owner, and the lifestyle they actually have.
We also love the artistry of grooming. From breed-inspired and hand-scissored finishes to fun styling and creative grooming, there’s something really special about being able to combine technical skill with creativity. Some dogs come to us for a practical, comfortable haircut and others get to leave looking like walking artwork. Both deserve the same attention to quality and care.
I think one of the things that sets Collar & Comb Groomerie apart is that we’re willing to look at the whole animal. Is this dog painful? Is their behavior different than usual? Is there a skin change, a new lump, an ear that looks uncomfortable, or a mobility issue we need to accommodate? Sometimes one of the most valuable things we can do isn’t part of the haircut at all. It’s telling an owner, “Hey, we noticed something today that you may want your veterinarian to look at.”
That doesn’t mean we’re trying to practice veterinary medicine in a grooming salon. We’re very conscious of that boundary. It means we’re animal-care professionals who spend a tremendous amount of hands-on time with our clients’ pets, and I believe we have a responsibility to pay attention.
Continuing education is a huge part of that. Grooming techniques, products, equipment, coat care, creative grooming, and our understanding of animal behavior continue to evolve. I don’t ever want us to reach a point where we think we have nothing left to learn.
I’m probably most proud that Collar & Comb Groomerie has developed its own identity over the last six years. The business began as a pet boutique before my ownership, and today we’ve become a grooming-focused business with a philosophy and reputation that are distinctly our own.
We’ve also been fortunate to build relationships with clients who have trusted us with their pets for years. We know their dogs. We know which one needs a little extra encouragement, which one has opinions about their feet, which one needs more time, and which one walks in like they own the place. That relationship is one of my favorite parts of what we do.
Ultimately, I don’t want Collar & Comb Groomerie to be known simply for one type of dog or one style of haircut. I want us to be known for thoughtful, skilled grooming. Whether we’re maintaining a doodle’s coat, helping an older dog stay clean and comfortable, working with a nervous pet, creating a beautiful hand-scissored finish, or having a little fun with creative grooming, the standard behind it should be the same: quality work with the individual animal at the center of it.
Pretty hair is important. The dog wearing it is more important.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
One of my favorite things about the Kansas City area is that we get a little bit of everything. There’s so much to do in the city, but you don’t have to travel very far before you’re back to farmland, horses, open spaces, and smaller communities. Our family has always had animals as a big part of our lives, so I really appreciate being able to have that rural lifestyle without feeling disconnected from the city.
I also love the history throughout the area. Collar & Comb Groomerie is located in a historic building in Spring Hill, and I’ve always loved old buildings and the stories behind them. As the metro continues expanding south, I hope we can grow without losing all of the history, farmland, and character that make these communities special.
If I had to pick something I like least, it would probably be some of the growing pains that come with how quickly the area is expanding. More development, more traffic, and more competition can change the feel of smaller communities pretty quickly. Social media can also make the KC small-business world feel surprisingly small sometimes!
Overall, though, I love that Kansas City can feel like a major city and a collection of small communities at the same time. There really is a place here for just about everyone
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Ccgroomerie.com
- Other: Collarpetgrooming@gmail.com
