- Barbershops are the linchpin of the community.
That's where guys go to talk. That's where you see,
you know, the politics of the day.
It all happens in the barbershop.
I think some men need that because they have no outlet.
We want to empower that as much as we can.
Squire Technologies is a platform that allows barbershop
owners and barbers to manage
their businesses more effectively.
(upbeat music)
- I've been a barber for about
28, 29 years now.
And I've followed in the footsteps of my father,
my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.
(door creaking)
- I'm not sharing with you yet, Dad.
(Nick laughing)
He's here.
What an entrance.
You know, learning off my father,
he was just a master.
He could deal with every single
walk of life.
We've been a big part of the city center and Sheffield,
and we've become a little bit of an institution,
I would say.
You know, we changed all our barber shops
to appointments instead of a walk-in business,
because that's the first time that's happened
in over a hundred years.
My brother and myself, where we're at,
we just couldn't see some of the older clients
jumping on board with this at all.
Well, we've completely been proved wrong.
I would say 95% feedback has been amazing.
And we get clients saying to us,
why didn't you do this years ago?
- [Dave] Barbershop owners were cobbling together
several pieces of software
to do exactly what Squire does.
We have services from payroll
to online booking to CRM.
One of the ideas we have going, you know,
is predictive haircuts and we're working on
an intelligent AI
and machine learning platform built on AWS
that allows folks to predict
what is your optimal time to get a haircut?
You forget to get a haircut, you know,
once you push it out by a week and over a year,
that's probably one or two less haircuts
that you would have received
and brought revenue to the barber.
- Oh, what have you done?
- Live in 4k!
- Look, look.
- [Justin] Something about the barbershop
that you can't get anywhere else.
Feeling is an emotion that you're able to give that
haircut to someone and make them feel good
as well as the client is like, yeah, this is mad.
I like this trim. I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling, I'm feeling great.
I believe that we now are like,
the new age of barbers.
We're, when we're able to give them that,
they're able to like, show the world.
It's like flaunting that,
the confidence is through the roof.
Technology has helped our business so much.
When we first started or when I was doing barbering
I'd have my phone and I'd be answering the phone calls,
booking in appointments.
And I was finding it so difficult.
I'd done it for such a long time.
Something that I found, which was Squire.
All you have to do is book online or through an app.
And it comes up straight away.
It's so simple. The clients get a text message.
We get a text message.
We can control what time we're working,
when we're not working, the days we have off,
it's like a hands-free tool or device that just helps
with all of our needs and all of our business.
It regulates stuff. People can pay online as well.
It's like taking barbering to the future.
- [Dave] Barbers are artists.
They really are super passionate about what they do.
I think owners have to straddle
that artistic enablement as well as
the business savvy to keep the business
going in the right direction.
- I feel like, when I'm around the team from Squire,
I do pick up loads of different things.
That's not just the art form of barbering.
It's like the actual, like the core side,
the fundamentals of being a businessman,
been able to learn from people that might have,
might have 10 salons?
You're like, well how do you do that?
- You know, my grandfather would have had to change
and adapt the business.
And then when my father came in and took over the business,
he would have had to change and adapt it massively.
I would say it's about looking at what you've got
and making sure that you improve,
always trying to improve things,
but not forgetting where we've come from.
It's almost like history repeating itself
or has repeated itself.
And I would say if my son or daughter decide to take over,
then they'll want to change everything that we do,
because we always know best, don't we?
- I'm all for it. You know, entrepreneurship.
And I'm all for, you know,
helping folks out, specifically small business
because they are, small businesses in particular,
are the life blood of the economy,
and it's what keeps the economy going.
One of the great things up here I hear is like,
now I could spend more time with my family.
Now that I can open another business,
now I can save a little bit of money
because of opening my second or third location.
That was not possible without Squire,
and those stories and that,
and that sentiment makes this all worthwhile.