There aren't too many people who make a career change mid-life, but even less often does a man, aged 51, enter a female-dominated industry like hairdressing. For Robin Davis at cuts@once, it was a natural progression. The business was started by his father-in-law 17 years earlier. When he retired and Robin and his wife, Cheryll, took over the business,
Robin decided to pick up the clippers.
"Originally, when I came in, it was to be as an administrator and salon assistant but the numbers didn't stack up so I had to learn to cut hair. I tried it out and discovered I enjoyed it. Men are a large part of our clientele so I concentrated on barbering."
cuts@once was a deserving winner of last year's Nelson/Tasman Chamber of Commerce Medium-Business Award. The acknowledgement was a formal nod to the salon's business model which has been a winner almost from the day it was first rolled out in 2002.
Their main point of difference is the appointment-free service, an offer which has proved a big hit with the over 4000 regular clients, weekend shoppers, and impulse buyers. The other notable difference is that, unlike the average salon which stocks only a small range of hair products, cuts@once sells 25 leading ranges in their salon in the Richmond Mall.
"We put those in and made it quite a significant part of the total and as we developed in the mall the retail just took off. Most salons don't want to be involved with retail as they see it as a separate component to their creativity - unless they are using the product line in their business. But we know it accounts for approximately 35% of revenue so it's not something we can put away."
Robin and Cheryll attribute their success to their staff though they admit it's not easy finding people with the right fit. "The biggest challenge in our business is staff management. We have a particular type of hairdresser. Not just focusing on their hairdressing, but also on customer service and the business systems. A lot of people don't like it like that and we understand that."
The cuts@once salon is not just a success story; it's a franchise prototype, an opportunity to replicate a winning business model elsewhere in the country. To date, no one has been brave enough to reproduce the formula, which is surprising when you consider the numbers: consistently 700-800 haircuts a week, a million dollar plus annual turnover and profitability averaging 19% over the last four years.
Says Robin, "That's been our biggest frustration, that we have had it in the market place for four years. Although we've had quite a bit of interest, we haven't been able to convert that into more outlets. We don't really know why."
It was Alan Hinton at WHK, who began doing the accounts 17 years ago. Then Jill Volmer stepped into the mix. Robin explains, "Jill has shown herself to be vitally interested in how our business is running. She has an extremely good grasp of what we're doing and she also has drive to see us develop it which is very encouraging. So it's not just a business
arrangement between an accountant and a business; it's more than that."
"Also Paul Rosanowski at the Nelson office has joined Cheryll and me and we are now an advisory board and meet once a month. We are looking for ways to kick a few goals really."
So with the business model bedded down, surely it's a time to rest and reflect? Not for Robin. "I regard a business as an organism, not an organisation. Therefore as an organism it's living, and it's either growing healthily or it's sick. There's no neutral ground; it's either going forward or backward so therefore you're always tweaking, you're always innovating, you're always looking for new opportunities. There's always something that needs to be going on otherwise it atrophies and that's the first step to failure."
