LOUISE WHITEMORE SHARES HER THOUGHTS ON FEELING INSPIRED AS A LOCAL, FEMALE BARBER
For me, I want to be inspired by people in the industry and at the moment I don’t see anybody who has a platform that is similar or relatable to me. I’ve started asking, “Where are the people that I can look up to?” I would like to see women putting themselves forward more and not be afraid to have a voice in the industry.
I feel there are a lot of reasons people don’t put themselves out there for bigger opportunities such as representing brands or stage work. Time is definitely one of them. Typically, women have more commitments alongside their work such as looking after family or running a household - regardless of whether or not they have children.
In addition, raising your profile on social media is not the easiest thing to do, especially these days with the potential for backlash. Not doing this could be a form of self-preservation for some. Creating content can take up a lot of time but you do it because you feel like you have to.
I personally want to be seen and recognised as the local, family barber in the area. Currently in the industry you don’t see anything promoting family barbering - we should be targeting these types of clients more. It’s a huge area of the market that’s overlooked.
I opened my first shop two years ago, and recently opened my second. We’re really local to the area and a lot of our clients are families. It’s lovely because you get to know everybody, and they also bring in more clients through word of mouth - you start building this spiderweb of people and all of sudden you’ve got a huge community. We want to be known as a safe place for our community. For example, if a local family’s kid has locked themselves out and it’s raining outside, they can come into the shop and wait for an hour until their parents get home.
Creating this community means that people completely fly the flag for you all the time. They’re all on social media and will recommend us to people - I don’t even need to ask them to do it. This is what inspires me to do my work, and, from my perspective, it would be nice to see more prominent people in the industry that I (and other local barbers like me) could relate to. A typical salon owner with a shop or two - that’s what I want to be seeing. I want to see an industry that supports everybody, not just certain areas of it.”
I want to see an industry that supports everybody, not just certain areas of it
Louise
