After a few false starts, a new Guelph barbershop is ready to deliver fresh cuts and positivity at 5 Gordon St.
“We have one goal: make clients happy,” Cut Bar owner Mahdi Shamloo says. “Because after COVID-19 most people are upset.
“I’m a positive guy, all the time, I think about the positive.”
It’s a mindset that’s been shaped by Shamloo’s experience as a newcomer to Canada and one that’s been put to the test in the last 19 months, in both his professional and personal life.
In March of 2020 he fulfilled a longtime dream of opening his own barber shop, only to have to shut the doors two weeks later as the world went into lockdown.
Near the same time, around a month before COVID was declared a pandemic, Shamloo and his wife welcomed their first child. But travel restrictions meant family members living abroad couldn’t come help them care for the newborn as planned.
“After lockdown, we’re not making money,” he recalls. “Baby’s here, (we have) no experience. We want to go to the doctor, all the doctors check your baby on Zoom.
“We had a hard time, but we’re not complaining because this is life. In Iran we believe life is only hard for the first 100 years,” he says with a laugh. “After that everything is fun.”
In June 2020, when allowed by the province, Shamloo reopened Cut Bar. He bought advertising for the second time. He hired other barbers. Slowly his client base began to grow.
When Ontario went back into lockdown after Christmas, Shamloo was so upset he shaved his head. He called the Canada Revenue Agency about pandemic relief programs for businesses, but was told he needed tax statements from 2019 to access support. Because Cut Bar opened in 2020, that wasn’t possible.
Shamloo persevered. Since reopening from the third provincially-mandated closure in June, the shop's client base has been steadily growing once again.
A barber for 12 years — six in Canada and six part-time in his native Iran where he also worked as teacher — Shamloo says he mixed the best parts of the various places he’s worked, including affordable prices, high cleanliness standards, and straight razor shaves, to create Cut Bar. His own eye for design is also evident in chandeliers and other special touches around the shop.
The result is a place where he hopes anyone will feel welcome. While one establishment he worked at had only hockey on TV constantly, Shamloo prefers something more “multicultural” like the Just for Laughs Gags channel or Charlie Chaplin movies.
“You watch that in Japan, everyone’s laughing,” he says. “In Africa, everyone's laughing.”
Over the course of his career, Shamloo has seen the positive impact barber shops can have. At one of his past jobs in Waterloo they gave free haircuts to Syrian refugees. He’s also offered complimentary cuts to retirement home residents and regularly uses his connections to hook clients up with jobs.
“After Canadians welcomed me, I like to return the positive energy,” Shamloo says.
And for him, the effect of a good haircut goes far beyond the individual.
“When everybody’s happy and everyone has nice haircuts, you create a very good place to live, a very happy city,” he says.
Eventually, he explains, he'd like to partner with other barbers to create a Guelph-wide festival offering discounted haircuts for all. In the meantime he hopes people continue to support each other as we emerge from the pandemic.
"Now's the time to help each other, not like what happened with toilet paper," he jokes.
