Scumbags Barber Shop is a polarising brand … but for those that love it, they wouldn’t go anywhere else | #431

Tim

Right. So, it was purely driven by hormones.

 

Harrison

Yeah go with that.

 

Tim

Wow. Yeah. Nothing else.

 

Harrison

No no no. I grew up in a rural town so it was a bit different up there but my uncle was a hairdresser as well. And I got to go to a big hair show. It’s getting 100 girls run around in knickers and I thought this is pretty good I could get into this for a living.

 

Tim

What do you love about the industry.?

 

Harrison

Oh there’s pretty much nothing you couldn’t love. You get to talk to people all day. My job feels like I turn up to work. I get to hang out with my mates my mates come in for a haircut and they give me money and leave. So it’s a bit like. I say.

 

Tim

Going to the scumbags. It certainly doesn’t feel like for you it doesn’t feel like going into a shop. For me as a client it doesn’t feel like I’m going into a shop. Actually, it just feels like I’m going to someone’s lounge room almost.

 

Harrison

Yeah. That was the goal. So the original plan at the shop was it should have felt like your dad’s mate’s garage and then you were just there to have a beer and hang out.

 

Tim

I like that. I want to explore that in greater detail shortly but first kind of interesting to see how you ended up starting and running a business called scumbag’s. You went and worked in corporate for a number of years for a big hairdressing company.

 

Harrison

So I started out. Cut my teeth as a hairdresser got to pretty high-level hairdressing really got over that went into the corporate side of it.

 

Tim

What’s high level as a hairdresser like? A better pair of scissors or what does it mean?

 

Harrison

No managing big high-end shops and training people and got it doing the sort of top end of town as far as hairdressing goes.

 

Tim

So you jump ship and go in to a cubicle as I would describe it.

 

Harrison

Cubicle No no. On the road sales wise but the sales role I was in was sort of multitasked so we would sit down with business owners and do a little bit of open books and help them with strategies and we got trained very well in that background. So that was a good backbone of being able to start a business.

 

Tim

It is a good backbone. I too spend a lot of time in my early years in corporate and as much as it kind of its jarred I never felt really like I belonged there. I look back at that now and I go geez I learned some good stuff.

 

Harrison

Yeah I don’t think you realize what you know until you’ve walked away from it you’ve got to implement it.

 

Tim

Yes yeah very true. So how long you last was in a cubicle. Out on the road for a big company.

 

Harrison

Six years. So I did a bit there.

 

Tim

How long before you got the itch into those six years of wanting to start your own business?

 

Harrison

Oh it’s a morbid but good story. So I found out I had a heart condition like a pretty significant one. The advice I got from my doctor was just treat every day like it’s your last for a while until we figure out what’s going on here because it could be very high risk could be very low risk and in a three-month window my wife and I got married went overseas holiday. Probably the first real holiday I’d ever had in my life and I got back and went. We’re working way too hard for our money. Let’s just open a little tiny shop do it for us. No other intentions just something relaxed. Monday to Friday we were home at night having a good life so that’s where it was born.

 

Tim

Beautiful. Were you out of the clear by the time do in terms of your health condition by the time you left corporate.

 

Harrison

Got cleared a month and a half ago.

 

Tim

That’s a Hi5 right there. How’s it feels.

 

Harrison

Yeah. Good. So I had three heart surgeries and it was electrical related but they’ve been accurate so it’s great.

 

Tim

Wow you’ve got a sparkle in your eye.

 

Harrison

It was a good day after that.

 

Tim

Just tell me more about that. Do you literally have a moment where you go. Life is short. Do what you love don’t stuff around.

 

Harrison

Yeah. I didn’t tell anyone that when I first found out because obviously people panic but it was for three months you could drop dead or it might never affect you and it could be anywhere in between. So you do kind of think about not waiting till retirement to do things. So owning a business was a bit of a goal that’s one that I kicked straight off got married to my wife pretty quick

 

Tim

She one of the ladies at the hairdressing conferences that you attended with your uncle?

 

Harrison

No she was an employee of mine.

 

Tim

So you know what they say about not doing something in your backyard.

 

Harrison

Yeah yeah yeah. I don’t think we can swear on the show but there’s something about we eat.

 

Tim

Right. Well what was it about wanting to run. Many people want to run their own business what for you was the appeal was that lifestyle was the ability to be your own boss. Were you going to make a million dollars?

 

Harrison

No. No intention to make a big living it was more of a, we were very modest people. One car basic house not a lot of debt. It was more going to work going home. Enjoying your time off. So that was the goal. We were both working 60 plus hours a week in our corporate roles. Was doing the same kind of work and we’d pass each other in the hallway on the weekend and she’d go away one week I go away the next. So we spent weekends together for about four years and we just got over that.

 

Tim

No doubt you could argue that starting your own business given you had a heart condition would be more stressful than just relaxing into a corporate job and going home at night.

 

Harrison

Obviously it wasn’t a relaxing corporate JOB. No look it was probably way less stressful you know cutting hair is not rocket science. If you follow the rules and do it well it’s easy.

 

Tim

Mate I’ve had some bad haircuts.

 

Harrison

Yeah yeah I’ve heard that before. Yeah it can be done. But look if you follow the basic principles too many people skip the basic principles and that’s where they go wrong. You follow the basics. Be a really friendly person. You couldn’t go to.

 

Tim

Give me the basics here of the top three.

 

Harrison

Top three basics to your training. Don’t learn from YouTube is probably number one. I’ve interviewed well over 150 people in the last four years and the amount that I learnt of YouTube is absolutely phenomenal and if you’ve not done year your trade or your training on someone you don’t learn the core skills. It just shows through the moment they got to do haircut in front of you. That’s the number one thing. Number two understand your profession. So don’t turn up like a Rockstar every day and make it about you make it about the customer you are there to service people.

 

Tim

You know a couple of rock stars working for you. Yeah yeah. Okay so it’s a bit I like that. It’s about them not you.

 

Harrison

Yeah and we’re in the service industry. If you don’t want to service people and make their experience good. Don’t get into the industry very simple.

 

Tim

I think the interviews done. Describe the first iteration of your first small business. What it looked like? What was it called?

 

Harrison

So the scumbag’s was born just over four years ago now and we rented a very very small shed out the back of the industrial park and in Noosa probably in the most quiet dead end part of the industrial park. It has since changed quite a lot. Used to have a lot of character down that end of town. It’s in recent times changed a lot for what I think’s the better but we opened a shop that we just wanted to see. Trade guys coming in on their lunch break through the day at a convenient time and it was really simple. Beer in the fridge I brought the couch in from home. We did the same without any banks or anything like that it was a little bit of a gleam in your eye and a bit of hope and.

 

Tim

The idea of industrial state. Interesting. I’ve interviewed a fellow down in Melbourne a few years ago he started a business called the common folk coffee company down on the Mornington Peninsula. Now he always wanted to have a coffee business in a high street but the rents were too high so he was actually forced to go and take over an old tile factory in an industrial estate. This is a fancy looking coffee joint but it is purely driven by the fact that he couldn’t afford high street rents. Maybe not so much for you but you. What were you trying to do it just appeal to traders who were going through the estate anyway?

 

Harrison

We were never going to hire anyone. So the whole purpose of the business was just enough work for me to come through the door and see between 20 and 30 blokes through the chair a day. From that area provided exactly that and it just snowballed from there. I think we hit that every day in the first four months and this is from nothing. We’d never cut hair in the town knows where the shop space before. So from the first day we opened we had no one in because no one knew about us and day number two I think we got signs up properly and I think we had two people come through the door and that’s all it takes is those two people to go tell four other people and then yeah the snowball takes effect.

 

Tim

How are those first two feels.

 

Harrison

They were actually little kids they were really good and it was a little boy and a girl I think they were twins and their Mum randomly was walking past. I think she was getting tires for the car and it looked like a bit of a rough shop I was surprise she walked in and she said you cut kids and we went absolutely.

 

Tim

Did you have a vision for what scum bags would be. Now it’s much more than a rough shop it’s a total experience. But back then when you say rough was it was just a chair and a mirror and plastic haircut.

 

Harrison

We like to say we built the shop on a budget is a complete understatement. I went thrift shop shopping I went dump shop shopping we bought the whole shop out of recycled material there wasn’t anything new. So I think we built the shop fit for five grand. You’re right. I’ve got a lot more than five grand invested into the new shop but that’s where our beginnings came from and we were just trying to listen to the customer and we just followed that.

 

Tim

And when you say we was your wife working in the business.

 

Harrison

She was she started out doing two days a week and cutting and I think she was filling in for a friend at a local wholesaler hairdressing supply shop for about three days a week just to help us make ends meet while it grew. But by the end of that four months she was on the floor full time with me.

 

Tim

How fantastic was it like working with your wife?

 

Harrison

Oh I’ve done that for a bit. I wouldn’t recommend it if you have never worked with a prior to your relationship. We worked very well together.

 

Tim

Where the name scumbag’s come from.

 

Harrison

Oh that’s the customers we like. We like the people that don’t have a place. We like the scumbags of the world. Dirty tradies the kids with somewhere to sort of identify with. Noosa has got a lot of let’s call them high end individuals that like high end stuff and they’re probably not going to enjoy our shops the names great deterrent to get them to go to the right shop.

 

Tim

I love it. Noosa it is a funny place because people listen to the show from all over the world I mean let’s paint a picture of Noosa it’s probably one of the most exclusive seaside resort towns in Australia. There is a real mix of 30 million dollar homes through to not quiet people on the street. But you know scumbag.

 

Harrison

The tradies the real people. There in there.

 

Tim

Yeah yeah. I’m now wondering where I live as I don’t have a 30 million dollar home. I’ve got no trade I don’t know podcasters are considered scumbags. I would have thought.

 

Harrison

The only good thing about the name and might I should probably explain how we got solid on this name. My dad has a master’s in marketing and pretty much everything he suggests we’ve gone and done the opposite. Not that that was intentional it was just he was saying things and I just everyone does this. We’ve got to do something different. So if you google search barber shop in Noosa and you see the word scumbags barbershop people get intrigued they click on it and we have a really high online presence just from people being inquisitive and wanting to click on the link.

 

Tim

Love it. What did your dad want to call it?

 

Harrison

No he just said just call it barbershop and just put Noosa at the end of it like don’t. Don’t complicate things.

 

Tim

It takes a whole marketing in Masters in order to give you that advice.

 

Harrison

It’s good advice but we just like to be different so.

 

Tim

It’s terrible advice. Well there’s two schools of thought. Barber shop Noosa barber shop. It’s going to probably Google pretty well because it’s got some keywords in it but it lacks a little bit of interest.

 

Harrison

Yeah and that’s if you look at a lot of places. That’s probably where they go wrong in the hair industry. They’re rather trying to have a really catchy hair related name or they’re very blank and plain. So there’s nothing to. You don’t walk away and you remember the name at a lot of hairdressing salons a barber shop.

 

Tim

I don’t often talk to my guests about the font they’ve chosen for their logo but I’m going to you know with all due respect Harrison and you’re a bigger bloke than me in some respects. You’ve used a medieval font and I put it alongside comic sans as two of the worst fonts.

 

Harrison

Okay so the original logo for the shop this will probably make sense really quickly. My wife is covered head to toe in tattoos and she developed our first logo so it was a bare knuckles holding a scissors and comb with the word scumbags written on the knuckles in Old English writing. Like a lot of the old let’s call them questionably non-crime related people would probably normally have as a scumbag on their knuckle. So we weren’t going to roll with that.

 

Tim

I love it. And please tell your wife that I love the logo because she sounds pretty scary.

 

Harrison

Oh yeah and she is scary.

 

Tim

Head to toe.

 

Harrison

Pretty acclimatizing exaggeration but she would be. She would be head to toe if she could. Yeah.

 

Tim

She got Harrison written on herself somewhere?

 

Harrison

No no we got a real with words. No words and pictures only.

 

Tim

What was the most challenging part of setting up scumbag’s for you.

 

Harrison

Probably taken that leap of faith. I was walking away from quite well paying job. Very comfortable lifestyle doing what I did. But just to sort of have that financial freedom away from everything else was a real big big big question in your mind. But you know it’s worked out the right way for us.

 

Tim

Yeah that leap of faith is huge. I mean it holds a lot of people back from doing a whole lot of things really do you now look back at that. Clearly you do now. Scumbag’s has some modicum of success about it but do you look back at the time when you were fearing leaving corporate and going jeez what was I worried about.

 

Harrison

No. I work really hard still. It’s what you want it to be. I mean any small business owner they have months where they get paid they have months but they don’t. You can’t look at it like that. You’ve got to look at it like you know the chips in the right direction sailing the right way and I’ve got to be in love with what you’re doing. I think if you’re a small business and if you don’t love it it’s time to think about something different.

 

Tim

Great advice. Is there any aspect to your business that you don’t love?

 

Harrison

Love everything about. Where we’ve made a big effort to make it the shop we want.

 

Tim

It is awesome. Let’s talk about it by the way listeners were talking to Harrison Mallory of Scumbags Barbershop in Noosa. Go there if you’re a scumbag if you’re a toff go somewhere else.

 

Harrison

There’re other places there.

 

Tim

I love a business that is willing to not work with certain clients because that takes courage.

 

Harrison

You can’t please everyone. And we know who we are we know who we want and we pitched pretty hard to those guys.

 

Tim

So let’s paint a picture of scumbags for those who aren’t lucky enough to have visited or have seen it.

 

Harrison

So you walk in the front door and I’ve got this big burly looking guy named Tommy. You’ll hear him from about three kilometres away. He stands at the front of the shop and says hello to anyone that walks past unless his cutting hair and if his company are having a conversation no one else in the room can hear anything so out loud. But Tommy is the most genuine nice guy you’d ever meet in the world.

 

Tim

He’s awesome. He has the ability, when you walk into a shop you kind of I don’t know you’re not quite prepared for whatever is going to happen. Tommy literally almost comes bouncing out of the ceiling. If they could bottle what Tommy has and sell it.

 

Harrison

Oh well we’ve got a policy on that. I don’t think we’ve ever checked. Put a coffee machine out the back caffeine does wonderful things and I think my guys have all had about seven cups of coffee by the time the doors open so they’re pretty buzz.

 

Tim

I love a haircut with shaking hand. So look there’s a Harley out the front you walk in there’s bloody rock posters and all sorts of posters all over the place. There’s some pretty funky looking people. Who are your staff including Tommy?

 

Harrison

We’ve got Tommy we’ve got Natty and Emma and my wife’s Ashley and then there’s obviously myself.

 

Tim

Yeah you’re out of it if you’ve got a tattoo. So I do feel particularly out of it.

 

Harrison

Yeah everyone’s got tattoo.

 

Tim

Its like a prerequisite but you do that in a job interview like oh I’m sorry you haven’t got the job.

 

Harrison

Yeah people get bent out of shape over that stuff no look the guys they all just identify with the shop and they look like they like to work there and that’s never been a prerequisite we’ve employed people that currently work over the phone. So but yeah you know they apply there because they like the look of the shop and they like people that are there.

 

Tim

And you know when you build a strong brand like you have and you probably don’t even know what that means but you know that’s marketing speak ask your dad but what you do is you attract the right people and you repel the wrong people right and kind of just great brand helps us sort things out.

 

Harrison

We’ve never been afraid to say no to the wrong work. And by the wrong work. It’s probably hard to get into as a definition without being a be headers or a barber but we want the customers that want to come in because it only takes one bad customer in the chair of one of my staff to upset the whole day and that has like a bit of a snowball effect on everyone’s experience with that particular Barber for the rest of the day. So we definitely don’t want to deter people from coming in but we want them to know the kind of shop they’re walking into before they even get through the front door.

 

Tim

Do you sit down with your staff and talk about this is what the customer experience is when someone comes into scumbag’s.

 

Harrison

I’m an absolute control freak with customer experience and I micromanage like crazy. Try and do it in a way that the guys are receiving the right tools to do their job well. So we like a lot of positive channeling with their training and their direction and we have incentives for them to do that. So they’ve all learnt that that’s a very enjoyable workspace as well. And I think the guys feed off everyone in the room so if everyone’s having a good day the whole room is buzzing and the customers just love that. I like people to walk into my shop and walk out feeling like their haircut was a secondary part of the experience and that the feel.

 

Tim

I’ve got to say and that’s why I got you in. I was so mesmerized by the times that I’ve been in going what is happening here. What is the secret herbs and spices that you are using at scumbag’s to create this whole dare I say vibe which sounds like something out of the castle. It’s just the vibe the vibe. You micromanage customer experience? Take us inside what that looks like in Harrison’s mind.

 

Harrison

So right from the interview process. We will take on anyone with any experience level if they can get the customer experience right. I’m very black and white with that when the guys come in and do their trial so we basically say if you can’t say a big hello and a big goodbye and just a big smile on your face because if you’re happy that everyone replicates that feeling you’ve got. If you can’t do that it’s going to be hard space to work in. So if you can adopt it on your trial. That’s basically the key thing we look for. We can fix the heck out side of things hair cutting is not rocket science it’s trainable but getting the right attitude that’s the hard one. So we basically can pick out. Someone doing the big hello and the big goodbye as the right person or the wrong person for us within the first hour then being on trial and every day if they forget to do it. One of the other team members will remind them.

 

Tim

Well again it’s like you’ve got the Japanese restaurant thing happening because you walk in and everyone says hello. And when you walk out or your staff say goodbye Yeah it’s like in unison.

 

Harrison

Yeah we just don’t scream Japanese profanities.

 

Tim

If you did I wouldn’t know anyway I don’t speak Japanese. Have you actually documented I’ve had a guest on prior off and quote this fellow Josh Nichols who owns an electrician’s franchise down in New South Wales and he has a 21 step customer mantra that every single one of his sparkies must tick every all 21 boxes when they go on site? Really simple stuff like park out in the street don’t park in the driveway. Be on time. Stuff like this. Have you got anything like that for scumbags?

 

Harrison

We have a procedure’s manual. We don’t put it on paper and hand it to the employees because we want everyone to still be themselves. So what I try and do is bring out the best in that particular employee and let them be them. Because I don’t want them being someone they are not but it’s just channeling the right bit of their personality out in the room so everyone in my shop is different personality and there are big personalities. Some are quite people some loud people I let the people be loud let the quiet people be quiet and the customers like those people will generally gravitate towards that particular Barber long term. So we get a lot of requests in the shop which I love because that just means they really bonded but at bottom.

 

Tim

Yeah well I’ve only ever had my hair cut by Tommy when I’ve been to your place and it leaves me wondering what would it be like to go to one of the others.

 

Harrison

So you feel like you’re cheating.

 

Tim

Yeah yeah I do. It’s like I’m sleeping around after I apologize to him as I go in.

 

Harrison

Get him at lunchtime and he won’t care. He’ll be like Tim jump jump in this chair. Yeah that’s fine too. I have my ramen noodles at the back.

 

Tim

So okay so you got this procedures manual. Well you have documented some things that you know the must dos and the don’t DO. You’re the micromanager bit of a control freak aren’t you.

 

Harrison

Yeah yeah. Try not to look like it but yeah

 

Tim

So do you allow your staff to input. They see an opportunity to improve an experience or to do something differently.

 

Harrison

Absolutely and the shops always.

 

Tim

You think they feel like they could.

 

Harrison

Yeah yeah 100 percent and we welcome that. Like if anything makes their job easy or if anything can improve the shop. We will take that on with open arms. The shop has changed so much since the day we opened. I mean we don’t even offer the same services.

 

Tim

We should indicate that you have moved the industrial estate you’re now on the main drag up to the main part of Noosa so you got a lot of traffic.

 

Harrison

A lot of traffic. Yeah it’s grown expedentially.

 

Tim

I don’t think that’s a word.

 

Harrison

It’s crazy how much the shop has grown since we’ve relocated. We were hoping for the volume of people we’re getting now at Christmas time. So Christmas is we’re probably going to have to try and hire another person.

 

Tim

You got space?

 

Harrison

Yeah we do.

 

Tim

Don’t put your prices up I think you’re really well priced by the way.

 

Harrison

Yeah we are price sensitive that’s for sure. I like everyone to feel like they can access the shop I don’t want to outprice people so we very tightly managed the guys times so that they’re cost efficient for us as employers. And that’s probably the biggest place a lot of shops let themselves down. They spend too long on work. They’re not charging correctly for but all my guys have been really good at some areas and their craft and really poor and others. So part of my job is to sort of make sure they’re meeting their quota for haircuts in a day and sticking within the timeframe at our price menu reflects.

 

Tim

There’s another thing that you do that caught my eye which I call the one percenter the one percenter is would you like a beer. First question you get asked which is nice. I know a lot of barber shops do that these days but you know low cost to high perceived cost. To me the customer ticks the box. Another thing you do is you wrap a hot towel around the head. I have no idea why you do it. I’ve got to tell them ahead but it feels good and I’m happy for that to happen again. Are these other one percenter that I haven’t experienced yet. And where do these come from.

 

Harrison

Look this is traditional barbering. We offer everyone a beer because I’ve just never worked in a place that do that and I think we’re the first on the coast to do it. Well yeah I could be wrong there but I think we were the first in the coast to do it. Everyone was blown away by it. What do you mean you’ve never had a beer with your haircut where have you lived? I’ll let these people pick up their beer would just pause for a second drink and we’re so used to it.

 

Tim

What other one percenter.

 

Harrison

Look the hot towel. We do hot towel in a back of the neck shave on every single haircut even little kids. I got a one year old that’s still enough. Well we’ll do that. My Young fella he’s one and we’ve done his neck a couple of times but you know you’ve got to pick and choose who did that. Obviously it’s dangerous but yeah most people love that experience as the kids love the hot towel and the shaved. We would cut like barbers not like hairdressers. That’s probably something’s been lost over the years but I’ve learnt both trades and there’s a lot of people have learnt both trades now. But the original old Greek barber that taught me was very very old school barber so he couldn’t introduce hairdressing to what he did. Long story short on how to describe it the listener’s hairdressers generally hold hair in their fingers and cut through their fingers. Barbers don’t touch hair they blunt cut completely through their scissors right. Back in the day I mean barbering 40 50 years ago is very different barbering is now but barbering 40 50 years ago guys are dirty and filthy Barbers didn’t want to touch them. They get infections if they cut themselves. So the head cut was performed completely through the comb. So you didn’t actually touch your customer. There are some applications where you’re going to revert back to some hairdressing skills because his new looks modern take on what used to be but my guys should 95 percent of the time cut traditional Barber haircuts on everyone.

 

Tim

Friend of mine Amanda who was a cohosts on a show just a couple of weeks ago had Bill from hey bill on the show you know down at Noosa Main beach shaved ice mustache with the mustache. Amanda’s written a fantastic blog post of recent times about ceremony and the fact that businesses that create ceremony around what they’re selling will often do better because it gets people emotionally engaged and there is an element of ceremony as you go in to scumbags putting on what you call the paper and all that. But there is a do you sort of feel like something special is about to happen.

 

Harrison

Yeah definitely. And look everyone follows that same process it doesn’t matter whose chair you sit in everyone’s identical you know you’re about to get your haircut and you should feel very good from the moment you sit in the chair. You should have a lot of confidence in the person that’s doing the hair cut on you. I’d like to think that no one would ever get in the chair and feel quite nervous like they’re getting someone less experienced than what they need to do the job. And if someone doesn’t walk out with a smile on their face and I’m standing on the front desk we’ve not hit the nail on the head on that ceremony that experience.

 

Tim

Because you’re cutting as well. You’ve got it you got a sick sense of looking around going well happy.

 

Harrison

My mirror can see every customer in the shop. I’m A position where I am for a reason. I’m also quite close to the back end of the shop so I can hear the phone conversations when people leaving. It’s a very rare event but if someone’s not 100 percent stoked on their experience I’ll be asking the question as to why.

 

Tim

You a good boss to people like working for. I’m Getting scared of you.

 

Harrison:

­­I hope so.

 

Tim

Well we’ll soon find out.

 

Harrison

We haven’t had anyone quit yet so that’s probably a good sign.

 

Tim

Yes well you’re right on to it. You are right on to it but I guess people know that and accept it and you’re running a tight ship.

 

Harrison

Yeah look it’s not what I want to say what I’ve just said it’s everything’s very positive. I don’t put a negative spin on it whatsoever. And like most trades its incentives to do the right thing and be productive and make your time efficient. My job as a boss is to give my guys all the tools to achieve those goals. So if I’m not doing that I’m doing them a disservice. So we’re equipping them better for their long term career.

 

Tim

When I walked in the other day it was a Hawaiian shirt Friday. I felt like a bit of a dick because I had just come back from a walk or a jog. Anything but a scumbag.

 

Harrison

I tell you what since we started doing Hawaiian on Friday is the new thing at the new shop. Alright I’ll go with it. We’ve now have customers turning up in their numbers wearing their Hawaiian shirts is great.

 

Tim

When I was in Vietnam a couple of weeks ago and I’ve had a jacket made with a Hawaiian beach scene. It’s got longboards it’s got palm trees. I have to wear it in on Friday.

 

Harrison

You’ll have to wear it and we’re thinking about even doing an extra service for people on Fridays. We’re trying to work that out at the moment.

 

Tim

What kind of extra service. Not happy ending.

 

Harrison

Too many blokes working the shop.

 

Tim

You are marketing that you do. I’m going to say word of mouth you know get two people in they tell two and you’ve got four all that kind of stuff. You got great locations so you got lots of traffic by foot and driving by. Are you doing anything else to embed yourself in the local community?

 

Harrison

Financially we spend a lot of money on marketing and we try to be active in the community as well. Being active in the community is a hard thing to measure because you’re only visibly seen by the people that are seen but you know we like to get out there and do some good services for some people. We’ve taken some community service over the years a little bit different to what normal marketing is but I think the locals value that stuff.

 

Tim

You said you drop a bit of dough financially in marketing?

 

Harrison

Yeah a little bit different to what most people would spend money on. We call there be budget marketing and that’s quite big budget. We go through a lot of beer I think last year it was getting close to 20000 dollars worth of beer. It’s a lot of beer for a little shop but we also spend a lot of money on stickers and stickers have been a major part of the success for just the awareness we have. We’ve had some local artists some great logos over the years and we’ve got a really good sticker guy who produces really high quality vinyl wrapped stickers for cars. So they will last four to five years before they start looking a little bit ratty over something cheap that you get overseas.

 

Tim

You made a big sticker.

 

Harrison

Yeah yeah. We’re talking palm of your hand or a little not crazy but a bumper sticker stuff. Yeah but yeah I think we’ve spent about 10 grand on stickers.

 

Tim

And giving them away or selling them?

 

Harrison

Giving them all away.

 

Tim

You got a bit of merch too have you got t shirts and caps.

 

Harrison

That’s new stuff a car that’s slow stuff.

 

Tim

I imagine if the sticker works why wouldn’t a merch t shirts or apparel work.

 

Harrison

Its give away people like free stuff my dad the marketing guy. He Told me a story way back when we first opened and it was a bit of an eye opener he was talking about the bank he uses one of the Big Four. And he got his nose ever joint with them one day because they were doing a big new client drive and they were giving all this free stuff away in better rates and he wrote them a letter online and said hey look I’ve been with you guys for 40 years and I’ve spent a lot of money with his own that time how about you offer me that same rate and they basically wrote back to him and said mate that’s a new customer drive. That’s not for existing customers. And later he changed banks over that lesson learned to look after the ones you got not the ones you want and the ones you’ve got will bring in the ones you want. We spend our money on our existing customers with our marketing budget rather than trying to get the new ones.

 

Tim

I take everything back that I said about your old man.

 

Harrison

Yeah sometimes it plays to have a beer with the old man.

 

Tim:

Yes worst haircut you’ve ever had to give?

 

Harrison

Probably mine but haven’t got much. It’s all we share at home. No one gives me haircut any more.

 

Tim

Trends?

 

Harrison

Don’t really follow them. We stick to the core barbering basics. I’d like to think we’re pretty far from the hipster sort of shop

 

Tim

Anyone tattooed scumbag’s on themselves.

 

Harrison

Oh we’ve got this amazing story only one we know of. We had this guy come into the shop back when early days like I’m talking first six to 12 months we were open and he was morbidly ill. He was just come out of radiation care and they basically said you’ve only got a little bit longer to live. So his daughter brought him in. Flew over from England and they brought him in to get a haircut. He had such a good experience and I hooked him up with some mates of mine so I got him in for a few experiences. I got him into his first tattoo got him into a few other little things like that because I got some friends in those areas and with his first tattoo he got the scumbags logo tattooed on his knuckles. He just had such a good time that the guy bounced back for a little while. It looked really good for about three months and he came and got a few haircuts and unfortunately it all happens to all of us. He passed on but he was a cool dude. He even asked to have an open casket with his knuckles pointing up it was just the coolest story.

 

Tim

That’s a wonderful story.

 

Harrison

So we got we got Bill up on the wall in the shop. Very high ranking in our area.

 

Tim

Any other tattoos?

 

Harrison

I’ve heard of some but I haven’t seen them all but I know they’re not the knuckles.

 

Tim

There is a business I interviewed many years ago it was a martial arts business in Canada somewhere and she offered lifetime training to anyone who was willing to get her logo tattooed on their body.

 

Harrison

Oh really.

 

Tim

Yeah lifetime haircuts for a scumbag tattoo?

 

Harrison

No I’d get anything tattooed on me for something free. You have to be a lot of people like me.

 

Tim

Your business in its current form has a ceiling in terms of growth. You can go back and add more seats. Get rid of the washing machines franchise license the idea?

 

Harrison

We’ve been approached for franchising countless times. The thing I hate seeing in our industry is so many people get sold the franchise and they get sold a dud. I think people that buy franchises in our industry have no ability to quality control the haircut. They can’t quality control the customer service side but they can’t understand what is being performed right and we’ve basically put a blueprint together over the last 12 months. If we did want to franchise it but we would have to hold the owners accountable to learning to cut hair because I couldn’t let the brand go with one shop not offering the same level. I just couldn’t do it.

 

Tim

It is such a risk with franchising because in all what happens to is one bad franchisee has a bad job within the whole franchise name has got a bad name so image.

 

Harrison

I am yet to see in our industry someone nail the franchise and that just really comes down to the hair side of things.

 

Tim

Well buddy chat with you confirmed everything I thought. You’re running a fantastic business it has grown out of nowhere a little industrial estate. You love it.

 

Harrison

Absolutely love it.

 

Tim

I’m going to be watching very closely as it continues to grow far as Tommy goes and I’ll just have to watch him make sure he doesn’t touch my hair