New School Barbers: Go behind the chair in revitalized barber scene

“You’re only as good as your last haircut.”

So reads the sign on the counter at Hudson Hawk Barber & Shop’s downtown store, where co-owners Thad Forrester and Paul Catlett started the Springfield barbershop in 2013.

Now the mantra might read, “You’re only as good as your last shop.”

Three years in business, the Hudson Hawk brand has grown into five locations, riding high on a new wave in the men’s grooming industry and joined by others specializing in fashionable hairdos alongside old school services such as straight razor shaves and hot towels.

“It’s all about customizing the experience to the client,” Forrester said. “Those little details that if they ever ended up somewhere else they’d think, ‘They didn’t do that.’”

September is full of details. It’s a critical time for the brand as Hudson Hawk plans to add its first out-of-town barbershop in the Westport neighborhood of Kansas City, move its busiest shop at Farmers Park into a larger space and launch its own product line.

Even with two other upstart new school barbershops in town, Dapper and Rogue Barber Co., Catlett said Hudson Hawk’s 2015 revenue was up 40 percent. To the proprietors, it’s proof positive there’s more than enough local business to go around.

Citing a January 2016 article in Complex magazine, Rogue Barber Co. LLC co-owner Dacy Mace said the global men’s grooming industry is on pace for $21 billion in 2016 revenue.

“Men are tired of the second-rate, 12-minute hack job,” said Ryan Mulcahy, co-owner of Rogue.

He pins the industry’s growth to customer experiences in the chair of the new American barbershop, which around town could include anything from at-home styling tips to a shoeshine or a mixed drink.

The scene
The presence of new-style barbershops is arguably strongest felt downtown, where Hudson Hawk, Rogue and Sean Brownfield’s turn-of-the-century-themed Dapper reside. But Mulcahy is content to let Rogue Barber grow at its own pace within the walls of his converted old-school gas station on Walnut Street and without much pressure to match other proprietors move for move.

“We’re not in competition with each other because of these different business models,” Mulcahy said. “Hudson Hawk is more of a franchise, Dapper is more of a club-like environment and here we don’t care what color your collar is. We’re here to cut your hair.”

In the renovated former Sterling hotel downtown, Dapper charges members $89 a month for barber servivces, scotch tastings and classes on fly-fishing and chivalry. Other services include scalp massages, oil-infused towels as well as cucumber eye peels, and rounding out the gentlemen’s theme is a members-only underground speakeasy and a haberdashery selling men’s shoes, cufflinks and custom tailoring.

Declining to disclose revenues, Mulcahy said Rogue is profitable one year into business and expansion likely would come when the barbers fully are booked weeks in advance.

While Hudson Hawk’s owners are done building out Springfield, they don’t think the barbering scene is an oversaturated market.

“We live in a metro area of half a million people – I invite more competition,” Forrester said. “The more people we have talking about men’s grooming here, the more people we have inherently talking about Hudson Hawk. We want it to be a generational thing, like a barbershop always has been.”

Clippers in demand
Autumn Stubblefield, who is one month into filling Rogue’s fourth chair after spending four years as a St. Louis-area Sport Clips manager, said the difference between the two styles of shops equates to more than the price of haircuts. Rogue haircuts start at $22, and prices at area chains like Sport Clips, Great Clips and Supercuts range from $14-$19 for basic cuts.

“It felt like quantity over quality,” Stubblefield said of corporate cutting. “I wasn’t able to give people the full attention they needed, and barbering and cosmetology is about that.”

When it comes to recruiting, Springfield barbershops use different tactics. Mulcahy, an industry educator for brands 18.21 Man Made and Hattori Hanzo Shears as well as a graduate of the Academy of Hair Design, keeps tabs on up-and-comers at the school when he visits to teach classes.

At Hudson Hawk, the co-owners put out feelers on social media but tend to hire through employee referrals.

“As soon as we say there’s a position open, five of their friends apply because they make a lot more money than the average barber,” said Catlett, who also owns Studio 417 Salon.

He said the company’s barbers start out at around $31,000 a year. The average beginning wage for barbers in Missouri is $17,420, according to May 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Growing to the point where the company’s culture could support expansion – Hudson Hawk has 45 employees including a full-time shop coordinator at each store – involved a somewhat unorthodox approach.

“Some of our top barbers who help run our company today could not cut hair three years ago,” Catlett said, noting he and Forrester would do late-night and weekend training sessions. “We had to allow them to make mistakes and do bad haircuts to learn from that.”

Hudson Hawk also brings in other stylists for workshops, something that led to the hire of Philadelphia-based stylist and educator Marc Williams as Hudson Hawk’s new creative director. He’s moving to Springfield to establish a standard for Hudson Hawk’s barbers and style photography, and to maintain quality control when launching in new markets.

A licensed cosmetologist and barber for 16 years, Williams’ styles have made appearances in music videos and magazines American Salon and Ebony. Through his workshops in Springfield the last two years, Williams became sold on the Hudson Hawk mission.

“To do everything they’ve done in the past three years and the opportunity for growth, I think, is amazing,” said Williams, who plans to continue running the Philadelphia shop, Styles Inspired By Marc. “The East and West coasts are oversaturated with barbershops, but the Midwest and what Hudson Hawk has going on is an untapped market.”