500 and 1: Finding retail genius at the barber shop - Brief Article

Home Channel News, May 21, 2001 by Rob Cappiello

This annual event, the NHCN Top 500 Report, celebrates the biggest and the best in our industry. I am continually shocked to see the numbers that some of the retailers in this business are able to post, year after year. But there is a retailer of sorts, which will never make a top 500 list, yet is run by one of the greatest marketers I have ever come across.

You see, Virginia has been cutting my hair, on and off, for about 25 years. We've talked about the New York Mets (a lot), her boyfriends, then her husband and later, her children. Now she is gone. Her rotten husband got this great new job and they moved away to, of all places, Virginia. I told her not to many that guy. Now I've had to go out and find someone else to cut my hair.

I know, I know, it shouldn't be such a big deal. Look at my picture in this column. I don't exactly have a particularly fashionable 'do. It's just, well, I was comfortable with Virginia.

My wife suggested that I try Adam's Barber Shop.

I don't know about you, but I have been avoiding "barber shops" since my father took me for $1 clip jobs by old men with hands so gnarled that they could pass for grapevines. I'm not the most stylish guy on earth, but a barber shop?

"Go," she said. So I went.

Adam's Barber Shop sits in the corner of the most nondescript little strip center with inadequate parking. It has a red-and-white striped pole and a sort of ordinary-looking-but-comfortable interior. I sat down with five or six other guys and waited my turn.

Pretty crowded, I thought. These other guys don't look so bad. Probably Virginia's customers looking for a new place, just like me.

Odd, though. Only one barber and it's a woman. Barbers aren't women. Barbers are men. Women are stylists. "Where the heck is Adam?" I'm thinking.

Well, the wait wasn't nearly as long as I expected. The guys before me only took about 10 minutes each, and I must say, looked pretty good on the way out. I wasn't too upset that Adam wasn't around, as this woman seemed to know her way around a pair of scissors.

"Where's Adam?" Tasked as Ijumped into the chair. A comb pointed to the mirror. On the mirror was a barber's license for Laura alongside a picture of a 13-year-old kid.

"Adam is my son," she said. "This is my shop."

"Get out of here," I said with more than a hint of a Brooklyn accent. "This is a barber shop. Those are sports magazines over on the chairs. There's no shampoo girl. There's a straight edge razor over there. There's a red-and-white pole outside. This is a BARBER SHOP."

"I like to cut men's hair," Laura responded. "I'm good at cutting men's hair. I don't even want women in the shop. So I named the place after my son Adam and put up the barber pole."

She explained that a woman's cut and style take longer, produce more complaints and aren't necessarily as profitable. For women you need to inventory dyes and rollers. You need to invest in dryers.

Laura knows her market. She has zeroed in on who her customer is and caters to his needs. Every thing she has done is designed to attract men and discourage women from the shop. As far as I am concerned, she is a retail genius.

Besides, at $10 for a great 10-minute haircut, how can I go wrong?