When worldwide lockdowns began, one of the first things to close were hair salons. But what if you had a mobile barbershop that came to you to give you a haircut — a barbershop that was fully “COVID-compliant,” that would pull up at or near your home, and still deliver quality service?
TRIM-IT founder Darren Tenkorang probably didn’t envision a pandemic shutting down the world when he first founded his mobile barbershop company. In fact, he told Forbes that his initial idea was simply to create an app that would dispatch a barber on demand — like Uber or Lyft, but for haircuts.
Then he realized that the customer service — and accountability — still left much to be desired. So he stepped up his game by renovating the back of a van to make it look like a salon, painted the van with his logo, and his idea was truly able to take off.
Even before COVID-19 closed down the outside, people were using the app to book mobile barbershop appointments at their home, their office, and even their gym.
That first modified van was such a success that the company was able to raise money from angel investors, and the vans — which has now increased from one to seven vans — were giving an average of 65 haircuts a day.
And when the pandemic hit, that number increased by 300 percent. Demand for mobile barbershops was so high, in fact, that TRIM-IT had a waiting list of more than 7,000 at the peak of the first lockdown.
According to Crunchbase, the company recently raised another $1.1 million to franchise out their operations to meet this demand.
And while the company is strictly based in the United Kingdom, at the moment, they said they will be expanding to the United States soon.
