Get Groomed: how a mobile barber business is bringing cuts to Manchester offices and work spaces

A mobile barber business has arrived in Manchester and is bringing the scissors and shavers to offices and co-working spaces across the city.

Get Groomed was founded in London by Giuliano Dore and has now come north, describing the city as a vibrant and growing location to do business in. Although the company’s fleet of Manchester hair cutters can be booked to go to private homes Giuliano says one of its biggest sources of business is heading into workplaces as more people return to the office.

Giuliano also spoke about the ups and downs the industry has faced since the Covid-19 pandemic and as it now tries to come to terms with the cost of living crisis. He also spoke about how coronavirus led to an explosion of public interest in Get Groomed - even if many of the requests for a cut were actually illegal due to lockdown rules back then.

Why has Get Groomed arrived in Manchester and what does the business do?

Get Groomed has arrived in Manchester within the last few weeks as part of a national expansion for the company, which initially launched its website in 2017. As well as finding new clients in Greater Manchester the firm is also looking to build up a presence in the West Midlands.

Giuliano explained how bringing barbers into business premises is becoming a particularly significant part of the company’s work.

He said: “We’ve already got companies working with us to come to their offices in Manchester. Workers can come and get a haircut in the office. Workspaces have been asking us to come along and now some of them are asking us to come again. We’re hoping it might turn into something, maybe on a monthly basis.

“We know this has been very popular in London but we’ve only just started it here, although we think Manchester is the right kind of place for this. Everybody wants to be back in the office and and as this provides convenience it is really good for employees and employers.

“They provide a meeting room and we provide all the tools; the scissors, hair gels, creams. We also go to people’s individual homes and hospitals. That’s very popular, it gives people their dignity back. Sometimes we go to something like a corporate event and stay all day, sometimes the barbers come and go.”

Giuliano said Manchester was at the top of his list of places to expand his business and so far his early experiences in the city-region have lived up to expectations.

He said: “It has been extremely positive. Manchester is a big city in the UK and I think it’s going to grow. It’s a place to invest and from a corporate perspective it’s definitely the place to be.

“It’s also good for our visibility. We don’t want to be that start-up that is only focused on London. That’s not what we’re trying to do, we want to be focusing on the UK as a whole. Manchester felt like the right place to start with that. We’ve also had a lot of people asking when we were going to start providing services in Manchester, so it was definitely on our roadmap.”

How did Giuliano create and develop Get Groomed?

Giuliano started Get Groomed shortly after he arrived in London and then had a rather negative experience trying to find somewhere to get his hair cut which also fit in with his busy working life as a software and app developer.

He said: “I went to this really crowded place in Camden Town and it was horrible. There was no conversation and it was just not a good experience. I was also struggling to find good reviews online. There were these really cramped barbers’ shops or really fancy salons where you had to book appointments weeks in advance. The convenience wasn’t there and I basically found there was no app to help.

“With my business partner we decided to see if there was an appetite for a mobile barbers with availability done through an app. We were soon getting loads of requests from all over the UK and corporate companies were getting in touch. We were basically two nobodies who had just arrived in London so to be getting this attention was really exciting and cool. We started growing and hiring more barbers and covering more areas.”

A business with advantages in tough times

Giuliano says that as the economy emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic only to now face a massive cost of living crisis, mobile barbers have a number of key advantages over bricks-and-mortar salons.

Mobile barbers cut out significant costs such as rent, electricity, heating and business rates as they visit other people’s buildings, while many customers would still rather book a barber to visit them at home than venture out into a crowded indoor venue as coronavirus rates rise again.

Giuliano says he expects to see more barbers going mobile as the cost of maintaining salons and keeping them open continues to go up.

Being asked for illegal haircuts

Get Groomed’s expansion in Greater Manchester comes as Giuliano continues to steer the business back towards success after having to shut its operations down completely during the lockdowns in 2020 and at the start of 2021. However, that did not stop the demand for its services.

He said: “We must have had about 50 calls a day from people asking for haircuts illegally. It was obviously something we couldn’t offer but we had a really big spike in traffic on our website.

“People were ready to pay an insane amount of money to get their hair cut, while some were saying our barbers could go through the back door and there were no cameras so nobody would know. People were asking if they could pay triple. It was like contraband.

“They were really difficult moments for us because we were playing by the rules and were having to let people know it was not possible.

“We are just recognising that we were in a position of privilege because we were not essential workers and are just really happy that we made it through.”