Would you like fries with that cut and colour?

WHEN Pete Kennedy bought Fremantle’s Terrace Barber Shop 15 years ago, he bought a local institution, with some clients having been a part of the business since it opened in 1954.

Mr Kennedy grew the business for four years until 1999, at which time he felt comfortable leaving it in the hands of a colleague and went to London for 12 months with his family.

All went well and, on his return, Mr Kennedy brought with him a range of ideas for the business, particularly developing a more distinguished, high-end barbershop service.

With the business doing well during his 12-month absence, Mr Kennedy had no qualms moving to Christmas Island when his wife was offered a two-year contract to work there.

He rented the business to another barber and packed his bags.

“I had successfully rented out my business before for one year,” Mr Kennedy told WA Business News.

Two years down the track and again, back in Perth with a renewed drive to grow his Fremantle business, Mr Kennedy found things had changed for the worse.

“I came back refreshed, ready to have another shot at it and unfortunately the business wasn’t there when I got back. In the time I was away business really tapered off,” he said.

Much of the ensuing loss of business, Mr Kennedy claims, was due to the other operator’s inconsistent working schedule.

“When it was quiet he just went home and shut the door,” he said.

For a barbershop structured solely on walk-in business, not being able to walk through the door was a major issue.

“Coming back, [it] has been really hard work to get that business back up again,” Mr Kennedy said.

He said a significant percentage of his client base was lost over those two years, and it had taken several months to get them back.

“I’ve had six or seven months of assessing the damage. We had lost an awful lot of customers,” Mr Kennedy said.

At the time, he had the added pressure of the lease on his shop being due and negotiations taking longer than expected.

“It was on my mind while I was away (in Christmas Island) as to what I’d like to do with it [the business]. It was one of the big problems, my lease was due to expire and I had only just two or three months ago secured a five (year) plus five (year) lease. My hands were tied. I couldn’t do anything,” Mr Kennedy said.

So with two years worth of new ideas stored up, Mr Kennedy set about completely rebranding the business, going as far as changing the name to Kennedy’s Barber Shop.

“While I had the red white and blue stripes on, I wasn’t telling anyone what my name was or what I did,” Mr Kennedy said.

“The brief to the shop fitter and the logo designer was, ‘for blokes’, I want it to look like beer commercials, where it is like a bar. Lots of timber, the whole logo and everything is a bar feeling.

“I think we pulled that one off pretty well.

“Also when I got back I noticed there were a lot of unisex hairdressers offering discounts to male customers. Men are somewhat of an afterthought going into a ladies hairdresser.

“They’re allowed into that space but it’s not designed for them. They don’t have men’s shampoos, they don’t have beard trimming, they don’t even have men’s magazines.

“We have tried to design this as purely a men’s environment. We might have girls working there, but it is something totally unique for men. We have Foxtel sports, we have all the shaving creams, aftershaves, we do face shaves and we have men’s colours.”

Mr Kennedy said he was now trying to target a specific market with his new timber-heavy fit-out.

“I’m trying to appeal to the guys, I’m not trying to get other guys from other barber shops, I am trying to get guys from ladies hairdressers. I don’t do ladies and I don’t try and poach their clients,” he said.

To that end, Mr Kennedy has started a ‘Man Up’ campaign, challenging real men to leave their mother’s hairdresser behind with the slogan ‘A ladies hairdresser may care for your hair, but a barber cares for the whole man’.

“I just want blokes to be blokes,” he said.

Mr Kennedy knows his client base well and Kennedy’s remains a walk-in service with the odd appointment available.

“Blokes tend to wake up and it needs to be done that day. So we keep it at walk-in, but we are also offering appointments,” he said.

“What we can’t seem to do is re-book them for a month’s time.”

To generate repeat business, Mr Kennedy has created a loyalty program offering bonus add-on services for loyal customers.

“Basically it’s like, ‘would you like fries with that?’. We’re trying to up-sell our offering.”