...According to the Weather App on Apple, the sun’s gonna set before 8pm tonight. The leaves are brown and on the floor, Starbucks are getting their pumpkin syrups ready and there’s Halloween sweets on the ends of the aisles at Big Tesco. Summer is, officially, just about done.
Personally I’m a bit torn on it, I’m from a long line of sun worshippers and whilst we certainly haven’t been short changed with the weather this year (Former-Motoring-Journalist-
So as the Autumn Term is about to begin, we wanted to run through our summer a bit, share a few highlights, and thank those that need thanking along the way.
Technically this happened in April but we moved our premises in Tottenham into Unit8, a big, gorgeous, airy studio space where Tom Si and Amber are now more regularly joined by Matt and we’ve left Unit3 to just be a bar and cafe space. We’re delighted with how Unit8 is looking now and the feedback and love from all of you lot who’ve been to see us up there has been so appreciated. It’s been a long journey spanning so many locations for us in Tottenham, old heads will remember us at the doors of The Cause’s original space in Ashley House, and now we’ve bounced around into our third and hopefully final space in Gaunson House. We’re joined up there by the brilliant artists at Gloria Tattoo Studios and after a summer of watching the sunshine flood in through those great big windows, the space finally feels like home.
On the subject of Tottenham, we can’t not mention the addition of Mister Paul Sweeney in that store! Paul joined us this summer and instantly became part of the furniture (he would probably be one of those worn chesterfield typechairs you see in pubs), having cut in various stores across the capital including Murdock London, where many, many moons ago he worked with Matt, Jacob and indeed Kane. Paul has fit in a treat up in Tottenham and is already busy so make sure you book in early if you want to meet our latest recruit.
And to round off the Tottenham news we’re delighted to say that from the end of September we’re actually hosting some barber training with the incredibly talented Sam William Hill in Unit8. If you are a barber reading this, DM us fast to try and secure one of the last places for the day, but most of you reading this won’t be sharpening your scissors and so you may well be wondering why it’s worth mentioning this at all - we should also address that this summer we raised our prices and we want to say thanks to everyone who has been so understanding that for us as a business it was a decision we couldn’t really avoid.
It’s not just about the rising costs that we have as a business, though anyone running anything themselves will know how significant those cost rises have been in recent years, it’s also the fact that we want to continue to raise the income of our staff so that they can continue to keep up with the costs of living in and around London. You lot come and see us every month or so and if we aren’t paying our staff enough to live a life outside of the barbershop, what are they going to talk to you about? We want to ensure that we pay a proper wage so that our barbers can live a bit of a life and have a proper summer of their own, and each of them have, and I’ll speak more on that in a moment, but with rising costs we’re incredibly conscious that our standards need to continue to raise too, hence extra training, hence listening to your feedback, and hence us writing blog posts and making content like this, so that we can keep lines of communication with you guys, our customers, as open as possible, and so that we have the opportunity to thank you for allowing us to have a proper summer, and to continue to grow in our trade by investing in training from the best in the industry. So thank you.
And what a summer each of our lot have had. Kane had the wedding of the year and judging by the sun tan, the honeymoon of the year too. Simon in Tottenham has grown Unit3 into something huge, it now has it's own space with it’s own kitchen, get up there and enjoy one of their events when you can. Mitch returned to the mother country and drank Dublin out of Guiness, Tino visited a burn festival that was enough to make it’s own blog post, Gianni has done enough flights for all of us and has booked up Colombia for January for good measure, Matt’s even managed to escape to Germany for a few days, Amber has had the best news of all of us and Tom… Well, he’s always about isn’t he. Most of the dancefloors of North and East London have been graced by his presence at some point, and the rest of the time he’s been propping up the bar in Unit3.
Thanks to all of you for helping to make this summer a great one. Here’s to the changing of the seasons.
