Take one step into Mane Square Haircuts, the hair salon that opened in November on Crow Canyon Place in San Ramon, and you know it isn't an ordinary place to get a haircut.

To the right, there are six large, flatscreen televisions. In the corner, there are iPads for kids to play on. High-tech LED lights hang down from the ceiling and the floor is sleek hardwood. Oh, and to the left, styling seats are spread out in front of a wall-sized mirror.

Merge an Apple store with a Dave & Buster's to create a hair salon and it would probably look like Mane Square.

"We wanted a place for the whole family to go to get their hair cut," Stephane Dupont, who owns Mane Square with his wife TJ, said. "We wanted to appeal to everyone."

As interesting and unique Mane Square is cosmetically, what is more compelling are the owners — a Canadian power couple that moved to the East Bay 12 years ago — that knew next to nothing about hair before deciding to open a salon.

Stephane (pronounced stef-fon) was and still is an international banker in charge of investing millions of dollars in companies all over the world.

TJ was a corporate director for a leading global technology company, strategizing international marketing campaigns.

The couple, in their 40s, were balancing demanding, stressful jobs and raising their two young boys at the same time. But, after Stephane returned from a China business trip in Sept. 2010, it became increasingly clear that their lifestyle wasn't sustainable.

"I got home and T.J. said, 'Enough of this,'" Stephane, who hasn't lost his French-Canadian accent, said. "We can't keep living like this."

So TJ walked away from her corporate job, and the couple decided they wanted to own their own business, giving TJ more flexibility to raise their 6- and 8-year-old sons.

But what business?

They had friends who'd opened a restaurant, but it didn't end well. They bounced around a couple other ideas, but eventually settled on one — a hair salon.

Stephane, TJ and the two boys went to three different hair salons. They thought about how much more convenient it would be if there could just be one place all three of them could get their hair trimmed. Plus, as someone who makes his living looking at numbers behind companies, Stephane liked the fundamentals of a haircut business.

"It's recession resistant, there is very little commodity risk and expenses are relatively low," Stephane said.

They flirted with the idea of buying a franchise salon, like a Supercuts or Sports Clips, but after talking with owners they quickly realized it wasn't for them. They didn't like the increased overheard and yielding control.

So the Duponts went at it alone. Smartly. Very smartly.

With T.J.'s background in marketing, she started doing focus groups, zeroing in on exactly what men, women and children want from their hair cut experience.

They learned men want to be entertained (the TVs), women want a sleek, comfortable atmosphere with good music (the design), and moms wanted kids to be kept busy (the iPads).

What also aided the Duponts was a lifetime amassing intelligent, talented friends they could lean on for advice. When another hair salon owner told they them they could not talk to his employees, they turned to a powerful lawyer friend in New York who wrote the man telling him yes they could.

When it came to the construction, they wanted to be up and running quickly but also wanted the job done right.

"I told the contractor, 'I want your best work and I want it done in 70 days,'" Stephane said. "'If you do that, I'll introduce you to all my friends on Sand Hill Road.' He was done in 70 days."

What they also learned from their focus groups was everyone wanted good hair cuts at reasonable prices. They recruited the best hair stylists they could find, paying them more money than what they receieved at their other salons and offering them incentives to retain customers. The prices are competitive with other salons, with a women's cut going for $35, men's for $22 and children for $17.

"It's just good business sense," Stephane said. "You want the best employees and you want them happy. A lot of turnover is bad for business."

One of the eight stylists the Duponts recruited for Mane Square is Effie Kristoferu, who has been cutting hair for more than a decade. She said she wouldn't have worked for owners who had no experience running a salon if it weren't for the Duponts' successful backgrounds and willingness to listen to stylists' advice about how to run the shop.

"They give us creative freedom," Kristoferu said. "At most places, they want you to be fast and get the customer out the door. But here they want us to have the client come back, so they let us take our time. I really like it here for that reason."

With all of these perks — the TVs, the sleek store, the relatively high pay for the stylists — it raises the question if Mane Square could become profitable.

Stephane is confident it will be. He says he's crunched the numbers and profitability is attainable. He stresses that they were smart with their investments into the store and haven't started in a big hole.

"If we were to have built a Sports Clips, it would have been a little less money, but not much," Stephane said.

Traffic to the store in these early days has been irregular, Stephane said. But Stephane said that is expected — noting people usually don't choose a new place to get their haircut on a whim.

What has brought people into the salon is an agreement with Green Valley Elementary School, by which a portion of the each student and parent haircut goes back to the school. It's a progam the Duponts are looking to expand to other schools in the area.

"It goes with our ethos," Stephane said. "It expands our local network and it's a way to give back to the community. This is where we live."