These past few months have been absolutely hectic for me and my family. I’ve been busy travelling around the world helping out families in need, helping my cousins and aunties set up their barber shop and overall been busy. Helping out my cousins set up their barber shop, I’ve learnt quite a lot of new things and tricks. If i was to ever encounter another family member or a friend that needed help in setting up a barber shop then I would be the go-to person. Anyways, I’ve decided to post some of the tips and steps I took to helping them set up their barber store.
Firstly, Barber Chairs.
Purchasing barber chairs was a huge problem for both of us, I wanted to purchase second-hand barber chairs and they wanted to purchase brand new barber chairs. After arguing back and forth for days on end, we finally settled with purchasing second-hand barber chairs. My reasoning was that they were new to the business and that they weren’t even sure they would succeed. If they did somehow fail or lose interest in their business then the loss wouldn’t be as big. However, if they decided to purchase everything brand new then selling it off second hand would incur a huge loss for them , possibly big enough to put them into a big debt that would require years to pay off. They are not wealthy people, and are a middle to low income family, they also have to pay for their two daughters university fees, totalling over 50 grand.
I decided that the best way to find barber chairs for sale was to go onto Gumtree and second hand websites. These websites had plenty of barber chairs on sale and most of them were in excellent quality. The only problem was contacting them and organising delivery. I did not want to drive around the states just to pick up a few barber chairs. Thus, this was a very troublesome and painful process of elimination. In the end, I had to visit other sites and purchase some brand new ones as the ones people were selling were just not up to the standard. I did not want to purchase just any barber chair, I wanted ones that looked brand new and ones that did not look second hand.
Secondly, Salon Equipment.
Getting salon equipment wasn’t as much trouble as I though it would’ve been. I just purchased everything off of Amazon, I even had Prime which meant extra fast delivery time. Everything arrived on time and in condition. I also did some research on how to purchase these items in bulk and am in the process of discussing possible business opportunities with suppliers. I even asked a few of my friends who knew barbers and about how they got everything as well as what brands to purchase. In the end, I had to do a lot of research myself on what the best brands of shampoo, hair spray, etc to buy. It was a lot of work and it easily took several weeks of my time. I wanted to ensure they were the best of the best. I even took it one step further and ordered some for myself so I could test them out. In the end, I settled with a few which I liked and which weren’t too expensive.
Thirdly, Set Up.
Lastly, I helped them set everything up. From hooking up the barber chairs to teaching them how to use the equipment,etc. I even helped them hire a few barbers, I honestly had no idea how to cut but after watching others do it for a few weeks. I reckon that I could do it , with a few months of practice. Of course, I won’t be doing it as I just don’t have the time to do so. All the back end, contract and payments were handled by my cousins. Overall, I learnt a lot from this experience, and consider this very valuable as this could help me in the future. In the end, they treated me out to dinner and the dinner was absolutely delicious, the dinner easily surpassed the hundreds!