Barbershop

A barbershop runs on a different clock from a hairdressing salon, and this section takes that difference seriously. Shorter turnarounds, more repeat visits, a clientele that plans less far ahead and walks in more often: almost every organisational question in a barbershop follows from those three properties.

The first is the clock. A fade does not take as long as a colour, but it forgives lateness even less, because at three or four appointments an hour every delay is handed straight to the next one. How long a slot really has to be, when cut and beard together deserve a package of their own, and where a supplement for the more involved version is more honest than an averaged price — those are the questions answered here.

The second is walk-in trade. Hardly any barbershop lives on appointments alone, and hardly any manages entirely without them. How walk-ins and booked appointments share the same day, who holds the queue when nobody is at the desk, and how to communicate a wait so that people do not leave again — there are articles here on all of it.

The third is attachment to a person. In a barbershop it is rarely the shop that gets booked but a particular barber. That is good for repeat business and awkward around holidays, illness and staff changes. How to set up a team so that one absence does not cost a whole day belongs here, as does the question of what a client note has to contain so that a cover appointment does not come out worse than the usual one.

What is not here: colour, long-hair cutting and the subjects of the classic salon sit under hairdressing salon; cross-cutting questions about team, capacity and numbers under studio management. And choosing or introducing a booking system is a decision of its own — that belongs in the salon software section.