HOB HOB HOORAY

Following their 40 year anniversary celebrations, HJ caught up with HOB’s Akin Konizi, Clive Collins and Paul Simbler to chat creativity, consistency and service

Creativity, consistency and service - those are the three things that we live by. In order to keep those three things maintained and sustained takes a lot of investment

When Hair on Broadway was first launched in 1983 David Bowie was number one with Let’s Dance, Margaret Thatcher was the first female Prime Minister and a can of Coke was 14p. Fast forward to 2023, and the iconic salon group celebrated their 40th anniversary with a special event and party, bringing together their teams and industry friends in London’s NOBU Hotel on 22 May. After the dust had settled, HJ caught up with the three founders…

HJ: How does it feel to have reached forty years in business?
Akin Konizi: It doesn’t really feel like forty years, it feels like yesterday that we started it all. For me, our anniversary night was emotional because of all the memories, the experiences, the shows, and all the stuff that we’ve been through. It was like, really that long? But we still look the same!

HJ: Yes, you don’t look a day over 21!

A: It doesn’t feel like… Oh my God, forty years!

Paul: When you think about it, it sounds a lot longer than it actually feels. I mean, I don’t know about you Clive, but do you feel like it’s been forty years?

Clive: No, I feel like it’s been about twenty! It hasn’t always been easy, but the good times have overridden the bad times, for sure.

P: I think the industry has given us a lot – especially places that we’ve been and things that we’ve done.

HJ: How have things evolved both creatively and strategically over your 40 years? And, what have been the biggest changes?

A: Well, we started off as a high street salon and initially our aspiration was to have a busy salon, maybe a few busy salons. We quickly went from that to wanting to be an internationally renowned brand. Creativity, consistency and service – those are the three things that we live by. In order to keep those three things maintained and sustained, takes a lot of investment. So now, we’ve kind of evolved into a business which is thinking about sustainability, consolidation, progress, growth, development as opposed to when we were younger; which was all about ‘growth, growth, growth’.

C: Brexit, COVID-19, the Government bringing in minimum wage, living wage, nest pensions… it’s had a big impact on our industry’s bottom line.

P: Years ago, if you had high turnover, nine out of ten times you would have high profit. But, nowadays, it’s not necessarily the case. Now, it’s all about your outgoings. Especially with the cost of living crisis and the energy crisis which have hit us. What did really help us was consolidating some of the salons, keeping all the teams and making ‘super salons’ as opposed to having sporadic salons.

A: For us to have got past the twenty year mark we have had to look after our staff – it's about sustaining people that care about the business. We’ve got how many people that have worked for us for over twenty years, Paul?

P: There’s 42 people. Things like mental health are now a huge priority. Years ago there was always the old cliché that ‘the client always comes first’, and now we find that our teams come first – if they’re happy, our clients are happy.

A: We’ve learnt that creatively, our aesthetic has to be wearable hair. We have two pillars of the brand; we have the commercial arm of brand that’s focused on making clients look and feel great, that’s so important because that pays for everything. But then there’s the other side of our brand which is about conceptive, conceptual, geometric, high fashion hair. Now that strategy not only pushes the brand in the industry as educators, but it’s also great for recruitment because anybody who is serious about their craft wants to work for people who are serious about their craft. But, we never forget that those crazy haircuts are not what makes us busy in the salon.

HJ: The quote that stood out for me most from the anniversary show was ‘hairdressers are business people that control their own destiny’. Would you be able to elaborate a little bit more on that…
P: We always say a clientele is what you make it. So, you know, when we first started, we were very big on blowdries. We still have staff that say they want cool, trendy clientele. There’s cool and trendy clienteles wherever you go, you’ve just got to make your service cool. A prime example of this is Akin making our blowdries look trendy with a great haircut. We had people queueing out the door for them. That’s an example of hairdressers being in control of their own destiny.

You make your own clientele, if you do a client and they don’t come back, why are you asking me whyyou’re not busy? I’m asking you why you’re not busy. If you don’t have a returning client, then you’re responsible for that.

A: I remember when a hairdresser dragged Clive over to the front desk and pointed to the appointment book and said to him “I’ve been here for three months and you said I was going to be busy! Why aren’t I busy?”. And, I’m so proud of Clive, he turned the business around that day and he said, “You know what? You’re right, why aren’t you busy?”. And that, for me, is the absolute epitome of how a hairdresser is responsible for their own clientele. You make your own clientele, if you do a client and they don’t come back, why are you asking me why you’re not busy? I’m asking you why you’re not busy. If you don’t have a returning client, then you’re responsible for that. We teach our staff that one client should bring back five more clients. If you give your client an average haircut, they can go anywhere for an average haircut, but if you give her a ‘wow’ haircut, her friend is going to come in, her mum’s going to come in, her sister's going to want to come in...

HJ: So, what’s the plan for HOB in the next forty years?
A: Well, we did have a master plan of retiring and sipping orange juice by a pool in Barbados, but we’ve kind of put that aside now and realised we need to go with what’s going to sustain us and our business for the next forty years.

C: We have to build a sustainable business.

P: One that can continue the legacy that we’ve created.

A: We’re now looking to encourage our staff to take it on as their business. We’ve said to our top people, ‘look guys, we’re where you’ll be, hopefully, in the next few years and we want you to take that on.’ They are building new blocks underneath us and, with our direction, we will have a business which will continue for the next forty years, hopefully. Whatever that looks like.