The NHBF has teamped up with organisations representing the hospitality, leisure and retail industry to put pressure on the Government to raise the threshold for support for businesses facing hardship due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The #raisethebar campaign is pushing for the £25,000 Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant to be made available to all businesses with a business rates value of up to £150,000. This would help many salons and barbershops in cities with higher business rates to deal with cash flow challenges, such as rents, that wage subsidies do not address. Currently, the £25,000 grant is only open to salons and barbershops with a rateable value of up to £51,000.
Ian Egerton, President of the National Hair & Beauty Federation and owner of The Stress Exchange in London and said, “By ignoring businesses such as mine with business rates just over the £51,000 threshold, the Government is storing up trouble to come. Not only am I not entitled to any financial grants, I also have no income at all, yet quarterly rents are still expected to be paid at the end of this month. This is not sustainable. A VAT delay does not help as ultimately the money still has to be paid back. I do not expect the government to fund failing businesses, however with no means of income and outgoings still expected, they urgently need a common sense approach to fairness.”
Hilary Hall, Chief Executive of NHBF added, “The government support has been focussed on small and micro businesses which has benefited many of our Members. But this campaign work is essential for our larger Members who have received little or no government support and rightly feel that they’ve fallen through the cracks. We hope that working together with other organisations as part of the #raisethebar campaign will increase our voice and help get these businesses the support they need to ensure their longer term survival.”
INSPIRED BY LOOKS AND STYLES FROM CLASSIC LITERATURE, MEN’S GROOMING PIONEER DAVID RACCUGLIA HAS CREATED A FRESH NEW BARBERING TREND RELEASE CALLED HIGH TEXTURE. JOINING FORCES WITH PAUL WILSON AND THE TEAM FROM ART + SCIENCE SALON, DAVID’S NEW TREND RELEASE CELEBRATES OLD SCHOOL TECHNIQUES.
The campaign was commissioned by DERT, a new socially conscious book brand, calling on the barber industry to join in promoting the cause of children’s literacy. DERT is launching a new initiative that provides storybooks to barbershops in under-resourced black communities.
HIGH TEXTURE is inspired by the great 19th century dandy authors like Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman with their existential outlook and witty quips. A grand sense of Victorian adventure and Gothic horror is in the spirit of High Texture’s styling, reflecting writings of classic 19th-century literature greats like Robert Louis Stevenson, author of many classics including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Treasure Island.
These influences collide with the great African American writing tradition of black writers like James Baldwin and Paul Laurence Dunbar with their call-to-arms for social change by wielding the power of the written prose and poetry. These eccentric literary inspirations are infused with a musical jolt, fueled by the soulful energy of Funk musicians like James Brown, and the impeccable glamour of Little Richard – where pure raw substance and emotion is expressed with a flashy layered personal style. High Texture compresses and fast-forwards it all to the 21st-century man.
DERT commissioned David Raccuglia to photograph 10 top American models in a range of hair expressions and fashion looks as part of a social campaign for the barber industry. High Texture promotes the cause of children’s literacy by debuting the social enterprise DERT to the barber industry. DERT is on a mission to encourage reading and learning by inspiring barbers to be literacy advocates and activating barbershops into reading friendly spaces.
“David and I are often focused on relevant trends when we create collections. What had us excited about this project is the fact that through design it would transcend trend,” says Paul Wilson, Global Artistic Director of American Crew and co-owner of Art & Science. “Art + Science salon is packed with incredible talent, so I brought one of our best master barbers, Anthony Johnson, as well Alice Salazar, our most diverse and skilled stylist. The highly textural shapes are architectural and sculptural and span all eras. We have never had so much fun on a project.”
“The barbershop has always been a space for men to gather and share stories in their journey to improve themselves,” adds David Raccuglia. “Expressing one’s style is a unique form of story-telling and barbers have the power to deepen the lives of their customers by being a catalyst to personal transformation. Like movies, sports and music, stories and characters from literature provide a universal experience that can help us dig deeper, and guide us towards being our best.”
DERT’s mission is to cultivate better lives and a stronger community through reading, stories, and the transformative power of books. DERT seeks to bring books to barbershops and salons worldwide, inspiring industry professionals to be literacy advocates that encourage their customers to best transform themselves on the inside and out.
With each purchase, DERT donates a portion of its profits towards the donation of their children’s storybooks to literacy programs in barbershops. DERT’s social mission is to ensure that all children identify as readers by having access to books and being read to on a regular basis. Reading together is vital for all children through their preschool years and beyond. DERT publishes a unique line of books and learning tools designed to engage families in reading through all stages of life.
Two brothers, an Olympia book curator, Ernesto Chavez, and a Brooklyn graphic designer, Marcos Chavez, founded DERT. Inspired to brand a new bookselling model by a symbol of nature (dirt) and the ethos of technical arts (design), the Chavez brothers formulated the concept of deep enhancement of reader technology known as D-E-R-T.
Learn more about the foundation and find out how to get involved by visiting dertbook.com.
When CEO and founder Jerry Nettuno and his team first heard about COVID-19 and as Safer at Home initiatives began to expand from one state to another, Schedulicity made the decision to waive all of their fees until July 1.
As time progressed and some barbershops and salons began to reopen, it became clear that the deadline was perhaps too soon for many of their clients. With that in mind, as of June 1, they have extended their waived fees for all businesses, including current, new and returning, until August 1. Any business can use the Schedulicity platform for free until August 1.
To find out more, or to sign up for Schedulicity, click here: https://bit.ly/2MrrTQ4
To help embed best practices and assist building the confidence of learners and their clients on how to return work safely, VTCT is releasing six new Infection Prevention qualifications for the hair, barbering, beauty, nail and sports industries, which will become a pre-requisite on all VTCT and ITEC qualifications from the 1st of August 2020.
The first qualification, which will be available for registration from Wednesday 10th June, will be Infection Prevention for Hairdressing and Barbering Services.
The VTCT have used information and materials from the World Health Organisation, national authorities in the UK and around the world, as well as learning from the experiences of those in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, who have been able to safely re-open barbershops and salons.
The qualification will allow learners to develop knowledge on the causes, transmissions and effects of COVID-19, the importance of social responsibility and the methods used to control transmission, such as correct hand hygiene and the use of PPE. They will also gain an understanding of the safe working practices required to protect themselves and their clients.
VTCT’s Chief Executive, Alan Woods OBE, said: “We take our responsiblity to the sector very seriously and are looking to help engender our centres, learners and their clients with the confidence that as things open up, their safety will remain paramount.”
We sat down on Monday 1st of June with representatives from the Hair and Barber Council, NHBF, VTCT, MHFed, British Master Barbers, British Barber Association, Habia and City & Guilds, to discuss the issue of state registration for barbering in the UK.
Don’t worry if you missed it. You can watch the full discussion below!
The NHBF has welcomed the latest announcement from the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on Friday, 30th May, providing more details on the next phase of the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Throughout June and July, the government will continue to pay 80% of wages up to a cap of £2,500 as well as employer National Insurance Contributions and pension contributions for the hours the employee doesn’t work.
From July 1, employers can bring furloughed staff back on a part-time basis, provided they pay the wages for the hours the employee works. Employers will still be able to claim under the scheme for the hours not worked.
In August, although the government will continue to pay 80% of wages up to £2,500, employers will be required to pay National Insurance and pension contributions for the hours the employee does not work. In September and moving on to October, the government payment will drop to 70%, and then on to 60% for the hours employees do not work. Employers will need to make up the amount to 80% during these months and pay National Insurance and pension contributions for the hours the employee does not work.
The scheme will close to new entrants from 30 June 2020. From this point onwards, employers will only be able to furlough employees that they have furloughed for a full three-week period before 30 June 2020. This means that the final date by which an employer can furlough an employee for the first time will be 10 June 2020.
Self-employed
individuals will be able to claim a second and final grant when
applications open in August 2020. The grant will be worth 70% of the
individual’s average monthly trading profits and will be paid in a
single instalment capped at £6,570 total.
The
first grant was worth 80 per cent of the individual’s average
monthly trading profits up to a maximum of £7,500. Applications for
this grant closes on 13 July 2020.
Hilary
Hall, NHBF chief executive commented ”The NHBF has been speaking
continuously with relevant government departments to ensure financial
support for all those in the industry, whether business owners,
employees or self-employed to make sure it does not peter out before
we have had a chance to re-open and return to full trading.
“Our sector will particularly benefit from being able to return people to work flexibly with the furlough scheme, bearing in mind salon capacity if client numbers are reduced to ensure safety and the need for childcare arrangements due to schools not fully reopening. Employers can start working out their staffing rotas and begin having these conversations ready for when the government says it is safe for hair salons, beauty salons and barbershops to re-open.”
As of today, Monday 1st of June, at 3pm, Barber Blades is moving back to an online service! This means they will be dispatching all online orders and will be doing their very best to turn them around as soon as they can.
Phone lines are still closed for now, but you can still contact the team via their live chat on barberblades.co.uk or through Facebook and Instagram.
Anyone ordering online should allow 2-3 working days for deliveries and, althought product returns cannot be accepted until after 15th June, Barber Blades have extended the warranty on all products by three months to cover this delay.
Keep an eye out on the site over the coming weeks as PPE products will be available soon!
After becoming a sponsor of the Hair and Beauty Charity and donating to their COVID-19 Relief Fund, Andis Company has launched a new social media campaign called #AndisNationCares.
From now until the end of June, Andis Company is sending £100 gift cards to barbers and stylists that have done something exceptional to help others during the coronavirus pandemic. This can be anything from providing free education and tutorials, creating coping strategies and advice to keep peers motivated, to charity work or fundraising for the NHS.
To nominate yourself or someone you know, head over to @andiscouk on Instagram and tell them who you would like to nominate and why, by commenting on the launch post or sending them a DM. The team will be selecting people every few days, so you can continue nominating as many people as you like from now and throughout June.
This is Andis’ way of recognising and appreciating the efforts of barbers and stylists, so the card will be a pre-loaded MasterCard or Visa Card for them to spend on whatever they want. Head to Instagram now to find out more or to nominate someone you think deserves some recognition.
Classic cars, thumping rhythms, the girls and of course the hair. Each were integral to the nineties rockabilly scene that birthed one of the industry’s most well known products, Layrite. The brand’s enigmatic owner, much like the brand itself, oozes Californian charm.
The barbershop, for many gents, is a rite of passage and a first glimpse into manhood. “l thought it was really special, you know,” says Donnie Hawley from behind his rose-tinted shades “Back then they had the Playboys in the drawer and l would see the older guys pull them out, and, you know, the old coke machines, I’d throw a dime in , pull the bottle and pop the top and kind of feel like a big boy when I was young.”
Donnie would have his first cutting experience at age thirteen, etching Mohawks for his cousin’s football team before the charmingly dubbed “hell week.” He went to train as a barber after being hurt in a factory incident but later dropped out to make some money. While in Barber College, however, he heard of a guy called “Bricks that was in the same school in a different city.
I heard about this guy who had Elvis tattooed on his whole back and I wanted to meet this guy because he was into rockabilly and I thought I was the only rockabilly cat around. He was going to Rosston in Anaheim, I was in Long Beach and I ended up meeting him at the Palomino, this honky-tonk club in North Hollywood and I met him and told him I wanted to be a barber too and I’m real good. The rockabilly scene was so small at the time and he was like, I’m already opening a shop’ and totally discouraged me.
Donnie, however, saw that the craft of barbering was dying out and knew he had to act. Much like in the UK, everything was unisex and the classic styles were in danger of being lost in the annals of history
“You’d drive around and barbering was vanishing. We’d see old guys sitting in the barber chairs by themselves reading the newspaper and something just clicked. I’ve got to save it man. I’ve got to do my part. I need to be the guy, the voice, the person that brings barbering back”.
To do so, he returned to school to get his barbering license and opened Hawleywood’s Barber Shop in 1999. Keen to buck the unisex trend, Donnie created a male-only space that Al Capone would have been at home in. Rich woods, cream walls. Of course, there was no social media at the time so Donnie returned to his beloved seen to get the word out.
I had to set up at shows to get myself out there and my first card and combs had my pager number on them, and I’d hand the combs out at shows, rockabilly, punk rock shows and people would start paging me at tattoo shops and there would be like twenty guys there. I started cutting hair in the back of Bert Grimm’s Shop at the Pike in Long Beach, the oldest tattoo shop in the United States. I was in car clubs so I’d cut their hair. I was cutting hair in the back of Classic Tattoo with Eric Maaske and he was a traditional tattooist who had a lot of famous guys come through his shop. Guys in Rancid, Social Distortion and Stray Cats, so I got to cut a lot of those guys hair and started making a name for myself.
All these experiences are key to understanding the Layrite brand. The product, much like Donnie’s barbering career came from necessity, only this time he needed the right product to style the slick backs and flat tops with fenders he was looking to save.
Layrite started because I was messing around making my own pomades, coming out of the rockabilly greaser scene. I had really curly hair, super curly hair, so I couldn’t find anything that I could get that big pomp with that would wash out. The stuff we had available was Butch Wax and petroleum-based products. It seemed like it would never wash out. If you didn’t style your hair right the first go around you weren’t able to wash it out and start over, you know what I mean?
Unfortunately, his first concoction wasn’t as practical as it was authentic. Not only were classic cars part of the scene but quite literally a part of his solution. When changing the rear main seal on an old Packard, Donnie thought the oil residue that may well have been there for thirty/forty years – had the consistency of a potential product.
I grabbed a mason jar and scooped as much as I could into it with some Vaseline and some Old Spice and some other things and rocked up to the show with it in. It worked but the only problem was my friends and I thought we were so cool because we were wearing grease that was actually from a car, but the girls were like, ‘dude you guys smell way too much like a garage. Way too much. It’s cool you’re greasers but you smell’. That was my first go at messing with pomade because of my curly hair.
Unperturbed, Donnie went back to the drawing board and continued his ad hoc approach to achieving the slick styles of the times. He eventually found the perfect mixture, that would later be christened by one, a similarly curly-haired client.
I started mixing ingredients that I thought would work and wash out. And I had a customer with similar hair to mine and I would have to use hairspray, round brush roll the curl out and I would put my own product in his hair and he was like, ‘man you’re the only person in my whole life that’s been able to get my hair to lay right.
The year was 1999, a good few years before social media came along. Layrite quickly gained a loyal following and people would drive for hours to pick up the product from the shop; at this point Donnie wasn’t shipping it. He was, however, pedaling the wildly popular at festivals and shows within the scene.
“You know, I started putting it in my own cans and taking it to shows, backpacking it in, sneaking it through with my band friends so they could get it backstage and throw it to the crowd. I would set up in coat closets, I would go to music festivals and set up at punk rock shows, rockabilly events. I would be asked by musicians to style their hair before they went on stage at shows. I brought my products along everywhere I went and gave it away. I started making my own shirts and gave those away”
Other than his tireless self-promotion, Donnie attributes the product’s success to just one simple attribute: it works. He had found a problem through experience and created a solution. They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the Layrite founder explains that many have tried and failed.
“I just had to make sure it performed. All these years later, there have been a lot of people that love Layrite and they take it and they try to copy it and they’re not even barbers. They’re four booths down at a show that I’ve been doing for fifteen years or more, and it looks like my product – same bottles, same packaging and it doesn’t work. It’s not made to perform because it was not made by a person that knows hair, knows barbering, knows products, knows what works and what doesn’t.”
He continues to reflect on the manner in which he stumbled across the best-selling formula “It took a long time. I accidently made Layrite. The ingredients in it allow you to wear it and wash it out. It was out of necessity because my friends would come in and they had grease in their hair. I’m not going to name names, but petroleum based products were all we had and I couldn’t get my clippers through it. I wanted to do the best haircut possible and it was preventing me from doing that. I remember when the right mix came around and I was able to wash it out, cut through the haircut perfectly and put the pomade back in. I never dreamed Layrite would be what it is.”
Donnie is now a bona-fide star in the barbering community. He’s travelled the world with both his brands – Layrite and Hawleywood’s Barber Shop, opened a shop in Australia and even had a film made about him. All this work, however, has been underpinned by a genuine love of the craft and wanting to preserve the art for future generations.
“It’s all traditional. I don’t use the word fade. It’s three outlines; everything is shaved with a razor. It’s very important for me to keep this trade of real barbering and to distinguish the difference between a barber and a stylist, because there is a difference. I feel blessed to have inspired so many. It’s been a wild ride, man.”
