Please read and tell me what you think?

Question

This is going to be a long post so I appreciate you taking time to read it. We are in need of some advice or direction. To start, my wife has been cutting hair for about 14 or so years and is a very good barber. Yes there are women barbers. She has been cutting hair where she started her new shop for almost 7 years. Over the past 7 years she has built up a very large clientele. I would say at least 4 or 5 hundred people. The shop she worked in normally ran 4 5 or so chairs, normally keeping 4 busy all the time. Most of the time if and when her coworkers were sitting she was cutting with 3 or 4 waiting for a cut in excess of an hours wait. She is that good.

Not to bore you with the details, but the owner of the barbershop and my wife had a disagreement and my wife decided to quit after seven years of employment there. It was just time to go. The new shop is on the other side of town yet, in the same town. She told my wife that it was her town and she wouldn’t work in this town because she knew every barber in town and she was going to call them and make sure they didn’t hire her so what was she to do? I said, forget about her, we will open you up your own shop and that’s what she did. The shop is very, very nice and upscale. She offers shaves, hot towels and all the other treats you wouldn’t expect to get in your run of the mill shop. She has retained about 40% of her customers. More and more are coming every day. Word of mouth has really worked well. We have spent thousands of dollars in advertising in the local papers, penny savers, flyers, brochures, business cards etc so we are definitely being proactive and trying to seek out her old customers. Here’s the dilemma we are facing.

Her old boss and her so called, old friends all have suffered amnesia and now have no idea where she has gone. They just say they don’t know or the make things up. Talking about bad business huh? The old boss has said every hateful thing from my wife has a metal illness to she is charging 16 dollars a haircut which neither are true. My wife has already taken a lot of business from this lady. I never wish misfortune on anyone but I want this to succeed as we have put everything we have into this business and we want it to work.

What were looking for are some creative ways to get men in the door. We want to pull people out of her old shop where the old hateful boss is. Again, not to be spiteful but there are a lot of her customers misplaced out there that don’t know where she’s gone. Once new customers get their haircut from my wife or her employee, whom got fired because he was accused of backing us financially which wasn’t the case. The lady just fired him. Pretty much guilty by association I guess. Their hooked. There has got to be a way that when people turn around and walk out of the shop when they don’t see their barber that we can help answer the question, where’s my barber? Unfortunately they are the property managers so I can’t park a truck with a banner or anything like that as they would have it towed. We have gone to all kinds of community events, joined the chamber, chased people down in the parking lot, ran ads for half price haircuts. We just need a hook. We even considered giving away free haircuts which we reconsidered on because we didn’t want to get riffraff in there. My wife is young and attractive and sometimes works alone. You see where I am going there. We are looking for some feedback as to what you like, dislike about getting your hair cut, what would you do if your old boss was spreading nasty rumors about you when your customers ask where you are? Where would you recommend we advertise as not all customers read publications, papers etc. We tried the radio and are in the process of getting vinyl put on the back of the car with the shop info. We leave the lights on at night so that the passerby’s can see in. Our shop has only been open for a short time but we are looking for short term growth in a expediential way. Thank you again for taking time to read this post.

Answer 1

Hopefully you saw my "U.S." answer. It's the same answer I have for the "U.K."

You've asked two or maybe three questions:

1. How can we reach new customers?

2. How can we reach the old customers?

3. How can we end the slanderous propaganda from the old owner?

It seems to me that you are taking care of (1) pretty well with a range of marketing efforts. If the referral business is that good, you could offer your happy customers a reward for sending you new business (they could pass a referral card to the new prospect; you would reward the original customer with a free cut when the prospect comes in). A mix of media, as you have instituted, is probably a good strategy. You can "test" your media effectiveness with slightly differing offers for each. Track them and spend more on the methods that are working for you.

(2) is difficult in that I don't think you can successfully "stalk" the old shop. You'll have that old owner even more paranoid than at present! If you have a customer list, then direct mail is a good way to go. If you do not have a customer list, then why not? You will need to try to create one. Start by writing down all the names you can think of. If you can't think of the name, they don't exist for you anymore; it's that brutal. The next issue is generating a mailing list. Commercial lists are available for $20 to $40 per thousand names. If most of the clientele is/was local, that won't break the bank. If they are from all over, it could get pricey. For small upcharges, you can obtain demographics (age, income, etc.) that could be helpful to you in your broader marketing campaigns. Anyway, for issue (2) you'll need to append a "was a customer" flag to your hundreds of records. If all this is too much to contemplate, you may need to work on issue (1) and hope that over time you'll regain the old customers through your general marketing efforts.

That said, for both issues (1) and (2) you will want to:

a) Take the high road. You can't afford to lower yourself to the kind of backbiting, etc., that the other shop is engaged in. I really don't think it's necessary to point out that your wife is not crazy, etc. People can sense the mean-spiritedness of the old owner, and you don't want to be associated with it.

b) Get your wife's photograph (and name) into all the advertising. Not only is she attractive, she's that barber that the old customers remember fondly. Hey, she's at the new shop. Great!

(3) If you have documentary evidence of untrue statements about your wife, you COULD take it to a lawyer. However, you would need to consider whether the quality of the publicity you get from this will help you or hurt you. My sense is that it probably won't do you much good, other than making you happy that the old so-and-so is getting their comeuppance. It may be that you want to let the old owner be their own worst advertising and let their small-mindedness be its own punishment.

Answer 2

get a billion flyers printed out advertising her place with the location and cost of an average hair cut and dump them all over the floor outside of the store

Answer 3

"My wife is young and attractive......."

That's your hook if you want men in the door.

Make some posters and flyers of your wife with "Now cutting REAL men's hair here" and a map to the new business. Put these up around her old place of work. Every man wants to be a real man in with a chance of some action.

If her ex-boss is haggard, add a photo of her and ask "Which barber would you rather be groomed by?"

Ok, you're thinking "Dude, that's my wife!!"

I'm not suggesting anyone get too jiggy in the photoshoot, just add that slight air of mystery that all men like. Get them thinking "If I get my hair cut there, maybe I might be in with a chance"

Im not suggesting that there could be any action on offer, but dude, s*x sells. And if she's as attractive as you say, and she's aiming for a male market, she needs to get her pretty on and use what she has.

Good luck!