Our Intro
My journey started in ladies hairdressing at the upmarket hair salon, Molton Brown. With four floors, servicing everything including hair trichology, cutting and colouring, beauty, a level for education and a huge range of their own beauty products. The entire Molton Brown business machine took 45+ people to operate.
After working in various salons around London, I decided to move to New Zealand and realised that I wanted to open a barbershop. A huge turnaround from my hairdressing focus but I felt that I liked the traditional aspect of barbering more. I also felt, globally, there was the beginning of an evolutionary shift in the barbering industry. Moving towards a more professional business frontier and lifting barbershops up to the hair salon level of practice.
In those days, barbers were for the ‘old geezers and young lads'. I opened my first barbershop attemptiing to attract a new client base: men frequenting hair salons. They were drawn in by the proce and would ask what they’d get for their $15 hair cut. I’d tell them they’d get a great haircut within 20 minutes but they weren;t impresed with missing out on a shampoo and coffee! Instead, they’;d walk across the road to the hair salon which charged $25. An hour or so later, I’d watch them walk back out with their new haircut.
After 6 months of wondering how I could get this new client base through the door, American Crew launched in New Zealand. No one offered free promotional material that was cool, until now. This was a big turning point in men’s grooming internationally. Their range of men’s grooming products, free promo stuff and uber-cool posters provided a clear vision and I knew I was on track with my business idea.
After opening several shops in Auckland, I decided to test the water in Melbourne. 5 years later I ended up with four shops in Melbournes CBD! I was a little bit busy. I was inevitably pulled back to Auckland and wanted to change it up and move away from large volume shops and create more of a boutique experience. Bespoke Barbers was born.
We are now an award-winning shop servicing over 1000 clients every month. Our team is outstanding. Our barbers are very talented and from all sorts of backgrounds (including former hairdressers). I guess, one of the most fulfilling and biggest shifts I’ve noticed in barbering is the increasing number of people wanting to be involved in the industry.
