A barber shop on wheels that you book via an app
bbc.com
bbc.com
Thing is, all you need for the job fits in a bag, and barbers have been mobile forever. Sure, you had to sit on your own chair in your own living room listening to your own stereo. Another bonus is that it's one of those rare trades where you make things disappear instead of creating stuff, so the tax man rarely catches you.
Source: My father did everything hair related for 40 years on multiple continents.
If a doctor, barber, dentist wanted to win my business literally all they would have to is shift their hours to accommodate office workers (e.g. like boutique fitness class hours open before work, after work, and lunch hours) and weekends.
In find this true for nearly all mom & pop doing retail. At least be open a little later a couple evenings a week so those who want to support SMB's can. I mean, you can't scream "Support us" and then be closed when I get off work. It's bad enough most towns have parking meters.
The mall / strip mall is open later and there's no charge for parking.
Obviously, the internet is even better in terms of convenience.
2) You may rely on the local business in some situations (urgently need something), but it can't survive on this type of custom alone.
3) The profits are much more likely to be fairly taxed and then spent in the local economy, which is positive for the community.
This means paying premium everytime for a feature you "may rely on ... in some situations".
But if you're buying online, you don't need to care that much if one particular company stops stocking something, because it's almost as easy to buy it off any other company online.
> 1) It's easier to influence a local business. "I don't like that you've stopped stocking X."
Doubtful. Businesses everywhere care about making money.
> 2) You may rely on the local business in some situations (urgently need something), but it can't survive on this type of custom alone.
The local part is true, although becoming less true with Amazon et. al. providing faster and faster shipping. The small part is either irrelevant or an anti-feature. Local big businesses typically carry more stuff, and hence are more likely to carry the thing you want.
I understand that there are small specialty retailers who carry goods big retailers might not, but that seems like a pretty niche case: needing something very rare right away.
> 3) The profits are much more likely to be fairly taxed and then spent in the local economy, which is positive for the community.
Probably not. If the difference in price is greater than the total tax collected, the community is better off buying as much as it can online.
I've yet to experience a small business that can keep its prices within 10% of Amazon.
I checked Amazon first to have a price in mind (12€), I paid 13€
1€ to not have something shipped to me & convenience of getting it immediately, plus helps keep the local bike shop around in case I need a repair I felt was worth it
Amazon is great if you know exactly what you need, or what to compare a few, well-defined options (especially for something like a technical book, where the reviews often highlight subjective things rather than "quality").
For a lot of things, however, I don't know exactly what I want going in. In principle, Amazon's recommender system could work here, but in practice, it hews really closely to authors, series, and topics I've already bought, with a dose of total randomness (what on earth is a "Chinchilla Lava Ledge?"). There's none of the serendipity of looking for one thing and finding something similar but better.
Most obvious is clothes. In a store you can feel the weight of the fabric, see the color in real life, hold it to your body, or just try it on to find a shirt that really fits you.
Sure, free returns are a thing, but trying more than two or three sizes to find the one that really fits you is a major hassle if you need to send packages back and forth.
Do you happen to have mom & pop clothing stores? Can a local place - not just a local branch of a chain store but an actual local place - provide benefits over a chain?
I think the biggest benefit of small stores is specialisation. For example, we have a jeans store in our town -- they sell nothing but jeans, and they have a huge selection. Much better than any of the chains we have here. They are also the only store that stocks my size. I really like that I can buy a pair of jeans there and don't have to shorten them.
Another thing that's really nice with small stores is that they can offer services that the chains cannot. Very often when I go to a store they just don't have my size any more. If it's a chain, they can sometimes check in their inventory system and see if a different store still has it in stock. But more often then not, it's the end of the season or something, and they're out, and there's no way to order it anymore. When the same thing happened to me in a local store, I was totally surprised when the sales guy just told me he'd call the seamstress and ask her to make another one in my size. A few days later I picked up my newly made shirt.
Obviously, not all small mom-and-pop shops are like that -- but some are really great.
Also, does Mom-n-Pop trust "just more people" with the keys to their four-generations family heirloom business?
Private clinics and barbers work morning to evening, except Saturdays (usually up to 1300/1400) and a strong no for Sundays.
The few docs I know having trouble filling their waiting room work evenings and weekends, and some do house-calls.
"Urgent care" walk-in clinics don't and are typically open 8-8 or so.
Physicians are at capacity. The American Medical Association has capped entries to medical school.
Other doctors are not like this.
This logic however does not apply to barbers.
Decentralize.
Whilst there's an economic element there's a large social/family element to the consideration which is why, IMO, you don't see many services time-shifting: particularly dentists where they are relatively well paid and usually able to direct their own hours.
Example I work in an SME that could make much more money working Sundays, but we choose to close and be with Church and family. Same sort of consideration; valuing social aspects far beyond their monetary value.
Not everyone will be happier with business hours expanding, especially low-wage workers I expect as the expanding hours will lead to lower QoL.
When my mother was too unwell to go to the surgery (she had cancer and was approaching end of life, but still at home), her GP made house calls as needed.
This was in the UK, just a couple of years ago.
I usually have to take time off work or at least make my time up if I need to visit one of those places as it's an hour + half train journey after to get back to work.
My work starts at 8:45am and those places open at 9am usually too so I can't just pop in before work etc.
Maybe it'd be worth finding a doctor/dentist/barber/whatever closer to your place of work?
I also do accommodate if I need to work outside of normal working hours, if I work with India or the US if the customer needs me earlier or later.
I guess that is why I kind of expect others who provide services also sometimes to go the extra mile, and to be honest most of the time you can find someone who does it.
This goes to a lack of understanding of how the 24 hr body clock works and what the cost is when everyone is functioning out of sync.
In the search for efficiency, we make people go out of sync with the rest of herd all the time.
This has consequences to their lives, their families and sooner or later the cascading consequences lead to things like 3 mile island, chernobyl and bhopal. Check what time they happened.
It doesn't work like that; You are ignoring all the other accidents that happened during the day and refusing to account for other factors (such as less staff during off-hours).
I can cut my own hair at home anytime I want (the real benefit/driver behind it) in about 7-10 minutes, including cleanup. Because it's at home, I cut it right before a shower (dry), sweep up with my hand and dispose of the hair, and take the shower.
I bought Amazon B001JJBC9Y ($60) and B001T0HHB0 ($25) and am happy with those.
(Unless I told you, you'd never know I cut my own hair.)
1. Good visibility of the back and sides of your head. Either a 3 way mirror, or some kind of video setup with your phone and a laptop.
2. Patience and practice. The muscle memory and hand eye coordination needed to handle the clippers correctly takes some time. If you cut your hair once every couple of weeks, that's approximately 25 reps per year, which really isn't that much considering the spacing between reps is so long.
Edit: I missed that you have been doing this for 12 years. That's longer than I've been at it ~3 years.
Another thing that helps is watching YouTube vids of legit barbers. There are a ton of different techniques that accomplish the same thing, you might find some new insights into ones that work for you.
Watched some videos on youtube, #4 tapered down to skin on sides, scissors on top.
I'm envious of 7-10 minutes though, usually I'm ~30 between detailing and cleanup. Still beats trip to barber though.
I like it because always had trouble getting cut how I wanted before. Sometimes it turns out better than others, but never had it look bad after a week or so worst case.
Likewise people are always surprised when I tell them I cut my own hair. GF didn't even believe me the first time until I showed her hair in trash.
Last time I was at a barbers was 2003, after that I just grew my hair long and really seldom cut it a little bit myself.
In 2013 I bought a hair trimmer and just cut everything to 0mm. Like you just before the shower, takes me too about 7-10 minutes. Sometimes I left a short mohawk just to mix it up.
In terms of electricity, which people have more intuition about, 7 orders of magnitude is the difference between a studio camera flash and a lightning strike .
I've done haircuts for myself for 15 years with only a pair of thinning scissors. I have never once used a clipper. I'm Asian with straight hair so this is possible. The sides and back are hard at first but thinning scissors make the cutting very mistake-tolerant. You can cut at any angle, roughly around the place that needs it, and it cuts some layers of hair off. You just repeat cutting and feeling the length with your hands and eventually it'll be at the right length. It takes me about 30-45 minutes including everything from cutting, showering after, vacuuming and clean up. I only recent stopped (and went back to a barber shop), only because I have a baby now and I really need every bit of energy and time I can get back in my life.
I used to go to a hair stylist who was a friend from church. After I switched to a very short cut, she told me "I don't want to lose business, but I have to tell you that you could do this yourself."
So I got the Wahls and they were fine. Some time later I got the Oster Classic 76, and they were much better.
I tried a few different blades and settled on the 1 1/2. Takes 5 minutes or so, and like another commenter I do it right before getting in the shower.
Sometimes I miss a spot and notice it later sticking out a bit. No big deal, since I have the clippers I can fix it in seconds!
Other things to get with the Oster are the Blade Wash and Kool Lube. They also have some grease and oil for the gears, but I don't use those much. Maybe I should open it up and clean and re-lubricate the innards, it's been about 10 years since I've done that.
As with every Uber for X thing, price is not a problem for winners of knowledge economy. For the rest it might be cheaper to do it themselves specially since trimming kits are quite cheap nowadays.
IIRC their prices are significantly higher ($50-$75) but they pitch themselves more for the "you have a big presentation tomorrow at 9am and we'll come to your house tonight at 10pm" crowd.
From their FAQ:
Q: Won’t my floor end up covered with hair?
A: Our barber credo says it all – no hair left behind! Every Shortcut barber carries a drop cloth, so your space stays clean and tidy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190131132814/https://www.getsh...
It cuts down on facility overhead, it opens up a wider base of people you can serve, and I can see no reason people wouldn't like to have their stylist come to them rather than go to them.
I could see the food truck approach maybe working better. Set up for the day or a few hours in a commercial area, and let local customers come to you.
What does it cost to rent a chair in a salon? (what is the operational expense (opex) of the current method)
What percentage of time that the salon is open, is the chair in use? (what is the haircut operational time)
What percentage of customers don't use your chair because they can't get to your location? (substitution value of stylists in a free market)
What percentage of your customers are 'regular' versus 'walk in'? (opportunity cost vs monthly recurring revenue (MRR))
I haven't done the research but I could certainly imagine in places like the Bay Area where rents are high that this could be a better system for a stylist than the traditional one.
But yeah, what you suggest is exactly what happens here in Silicon Valley. We have the haircut group that spends one day a week at eBay, one day at Google, one day at Cisco, etc. Same with the dentist and the car wash folks.
yes have you been to an Afro Caribbean barbers before?
Do we? Never heard of that before
https://pickpeach.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/toothmobile...
I would love it if a haircut van came to our office once a week.
they also recently raised money from Backstage Capital https://medium.com/greenroom/backstage-london-cohort-1-3a96c...
The travel time versus a stationary area is the hardest to overcome.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there. I have seen the hairdo-in-a-van in LA so the idea is far from novel, it is new to the UK though.
I actually can't think of anywhere in the UK where parking up in a van is that easy. There isn't the zoning in the way that the U.S. has it. Parking is always going to be tricky.
The workaround is to drive your customer from outside his house (on a steep hill) to some car-park or layby. But you have lost ten minutes at best doing that. A pro barber shop can make good money in that time.
There is also a restriction on how far the service can go. You are not going to be washing hair unless you are spending time filling and emptying tanks of water.
The trick is probably to get industrial estate businesses. An out of town industrial estate might lake a decent high street near by. If you can rock up there and get half a dozen or more customers done then that cuts down on the travel time.
The 'app' aspect doesn't cut down on the fundamental travel time problem. Most hairdressers have some type of trainee able to do phones, sweep the floor, wash the towels and be more versatile than an 'app'. I am therefore not sure how valuable the 'app' can be.
I think the RV is a better starting point than a Transit. In the UK market a camper van with some pop up top and some windows would be a better starting point, e.g. a modern VW rather than a retro one.
Getting my parents to the hair cutter takes planning, etc. It's a much bigger deal than most people (with younger more able parents) realize.
I live in Korea and I thought this was about prostitution. In Korea, barber shop poles are used to identify locations of brothels etc.
Anyway, I can see more and more use cases like this for certain segments of the population, e.g. elderly. Great idea!
What identifies barbershops then?
In that eventuality, yes, mobile service would obviously be at least as lucrative as van-based barber shops, probably far more so.
Prostitutes are still for the most part desperate immigrants, held hostage in various ways, and exploited by the companies that traffick them in and run the brothels. In other words, legalized prostitution still consists for the most part in paying money to shady people to be able to rape some poor girl.
Here it is on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Remington-HKVAC2000A-Haircut-Trimmer-...
Google had this kind of barbers in Mountain View a long time ago in its parking lot if I recall correctly.
I agree with most of your comment except this. Are you really saying that you don't think we can eventually automate on-demand services in every domain we can conceive?