I don’t really know why most companies make ‘blogs’ or newsletters or whatever this is - I imagine that a marketing exec would say something like ‘it’s essential to the customer journey’ or it’s part of a potential customer seeing us three times before buying something off of us or whatever. For us, we’ll probably work it out as we go along, but it feels fitting that the first one of these that I am writing is about last week’s summer party - we’re not really worried about your customer journey, or even selling you anything, but we would like to tell you about our summer piss up.
For about four years now we’ve been throwing these parties. This isn’t a staff party like a Christmas do, this is a party we throw for you lot, the regulars. When it finally gets to July and the sun begins to shine, which it doesn’t do enough in London, we fill the fridges with beer, put down the scissors a little bit earlier, and invite as many of you as we can fit into our store to come and drink with us until the DJ’s are bored of playing.
And in a similar sense to this newsletter, we don’t do it to try to make any money out of anyone, or to build ‘brand awareness’. We’re a group of mates who really enjoy working together, but more importantly than that, we really enjoy drinking together, and having cut most of your hair for quite a while now, we’ve found ourselves tending to think ‘we’d probably enjoy drinking with them, too’. And four years on the trot we’ve been right.
In years gone by we’ve done it in the Finsbury store which is great, the sun hits the storefront from lunch onwards and the pathway outside the shop fills up and spills over until we all dissipate into the surrounding pubs of Finsbury Park, but this year it felt only right to christen the new space in Tottenham by throwing the party up there in a slightly larger space, next door to Unit3 which has also had a bit of a makeover, and make use of the outdoor space that the barbers and the bar share up there (and, more importantly, the air con).
If you’ve visited our new Tottenham space already you’ll have seen that the space also hosts a small tattoo studio named Gloria, and the tattoo artists Ronnie and Fran were there all night providing flash tattoos at a discount rate for anyone who fancied them - who ever said that discount tattoo’s at a party with free booze was a bad idea?! Next door in Unit 3, local legends Realmz were providing Caribbean food that they were cooking up in the newly fitted open kitchen, and the DJ decks were manned by a collection of local heroes, including Eastwood, the clothing designer who works in the studios above the barbershop, and Matty who often works behind the bar in Unit3.
We were so grateful to all of you who came down and had a drink with us, those of you who came a bit earlier and brought your young families with you, to those of you who kept the ash trays dirty and the drinks flowing until the early hours of Sunday morning. Tottenham Tom was, as always, last man standing, staggering back to his boat in the early after locking up, and the night ended with the purest celebration of summer love - Kane from our Finsbury store getting his partner’s named tattooed on his neck, ahead of their wedding in 3 week’s time. Beautiful.
I’d love to say we’re already excited for next year’s summer party, but the truth is that Mo from Unit3 is insisting we start doing this 4 times a year. Might need to run it past the accountant first. Thanks to all of those who joined us, and to those who didn’t, we’ll see you next time.
