Barbershops experience mini-boom in downtown Vancouver
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 02:33:20 +0000
Customers at Junior’s Barbershop on Davie Street just off Burrard are lined up eight deep at noon on a Thursday, some lounging on leather couches in the waiting area of one of a growing list of such shops in the downtown core.
“As soon as the weekend is close, boom, it packs up,” said proprietor Junior Adusei. “As soon as it’s 3:30 — 4 p.m., the phone starts ringing and we’re booked for the rest of the night.”
Adusei, 30 years a barber, landed in his spot on the south side of Davie Street, between Burrard and Hornby at the front end of downtown’s mini-boom in barbering that has doubled the number of barbershops since 2012.
“Barbering itself has become a culture throughout North America,” Adusei said. “Especially with the help of Instagram and certain platforms, it’s become a big movement.”
Big enough that, in the evolution of downtown Vancouver’s retail landscape, barbering has become a noticeable element in the overall beauty category of retail, according to a recent study by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association.
The association released its study Thursday, which showed a net increase of 212 bricks-and-mortar retail stores between 2012 and 2019 in the 90 blocks of its catchment area, which includes much of the financial district and stretches south between Burrard and Granville all the way to Pacific Street
“I was pleasantly surprised,” said Charles Gauthier, CEO of the business association, “because if you rely just on what you hear on the street, in the media, it sounds like retail is going down the tubes.
Retail has become more competitive, with the advent of Amazon, Shopify and myriad other online shopping options, but Gauthier said that with 75 per cent of Canadians still doing most of their shopping in person at stores, the news isn’t all gloom.
The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association does still have its challenges, such as the strip of Granville Street south of Robson that Gauthier admitted isn’t being revitalized as quickly as anyone would like.
However, the beauty category of storefront retail, which includes barbershops, salons and nail bars — services that can’t be bought online — has become the biggest single component within the association’s 90 blocks with 204 storefronts, a net increase of 77 outlets between 2012 and 2019.
The association’s study didn’t count restaurants, bars or cannabis retail locations, which will be looked at in a separate study Gauthier said.
The rise of the luxury retail zone on Alberni Street between Burrard and Thurlow and in Pacific Centre Mall is another bright spot, Gauthier said, which makes up for some high-profile closures such as Ingledew’s Shoes.
As for barbers, Gauthier said the study noted that it is a business category that has low barriers to entry, not a lot of regulation and potentially high profit margins.
He added that barbers and stylists tend to build up a customer base with a great deal of loyalty. Even in tough times, haircuts aren’t the first thing people cut from their budgets.
Retail consultant David Gray, with the firm DIG360, said barbershops have become trendy and entrepreneurial Vancouverites have taken notice.
“Retail is pretty easy to copycat and, especially in Vancouver, there is a notion that if there’s not booming employment, there is a percentage of people who want to be their own boss,” Gray said.
“Will every barbershop succeed?” Gray said. “There are probably too many.”
At Junior’s, Adusei is riding the wave, grabbing tight hold of a customer niche that is attracted to urban styles, enough so that he has opened two more storefronts, one on Kingsway and a third, a franchise outlet, in Langley.
And he has started his own barber school to make sure he can keep up with the staff that he needs to keep all of them open.
“We worry that the rent will go up so high that it doesn’t make sense one day,” Adusei said. But at the moment Junior’s is “right dead centre where we should be, in terms of location.”
“As long as we keep cutting and have every chair filled and people are supporting what we do, people seem to really love this business.”