Our Story

The night before every varsity game, we’d pile into a friend’s basement and cut each other’s hair, copying the older guys we looked up to. Turned out I was good at it. Soon people asked for me by name. By the time I was selling my first $5 haircuts out of my mom’s basement, with my dad playing music and chatting up whoever was waiting, I had a following.

But barbering wasn’t the plan. I went to college, got the degree, took the corporate job. Six years in, I was bored out of my mind. When I lost that job in 2012, broke and alone my first summer in Hoboken, I wasn’t scared of starting over. I was scared of getting stuck again in something I didn’t love.

So I stopped running from the one thing I’d done my whole life. I enrolled in cosmetology school and never looked back. In the West Village I trained under an older Moroccan barber who became my mentor. When he cut, it looked like he was painting a portrait. When I opened my own doors, he was my first barber.

By 2015 I’d been circling the idea for years. Then a space opened up on Willow Avenue that had the history of a barbershop from the 70’s. I quit my job, emptied my savings, and went all in. From signing the lease to opening the doors was about 40 days. Jersey City followed in 2019.