27 Hair & Barber Related Business Ideas For 2023

I started my blog in 2018 after I decided to embrace my gray hair.

I dyed my hair for over 25 years, and by 2018 my hair was horribly damaged. It really only looked good for a few days after dyeing.

I spent years thinking about ditching the dye and letting my hair go gray, but I was worried about looking old, or like I’d “let myself go.” Finally, I had enough of the constant chemicals, the cost, and the upkeep, and I decided I would stop dying my hair.

I joined some Facebook gray hair support groups and noticed that a lot of us had questions, but couldn’t find our answers online. So I decided to start a website that would be a “one-stop-shop” for women with gray hair where they could find the information and products they needed.

Up until the point where I started Katie Goes Platinum, I felt thwarted in my career. I had studied art history and photography, but couldn’t make a great living from them.

So I’d spent years in office jobs. They paid well but weren’t personally fulfilling.

In 2015, my husband got laid off, and our older son almost died from a mystery illness. The bills started piling up, and we started looking around for other ways to bring in income.

Jen Sincero’s book, You Are A Badass at Making Money inspired me to start thinking about blogging as a viable side hustle option. It seemed perfectly suited to me since I could do it from home, after work, and the start-up costs were fairly minimal.

I came up with two different blog ideas, but neither of them panned out. I wasn’t excited enough about the topics to write about them frequently enough to earn income.

I was led to this career path as a business owner from my sheer motivation to do better in my life than what I had grown up with. My parents had me when they were teenagers and we lived meagerly while I was young.

I knew that if I wanted to go to college, I would need to find a way to pay for it myself along with my cost of living. I naturally had a knack for doing hair and art, so when I was 16, I had the chance to enroll in cosmetology school while in high school, and by 18, I was fully licensed. This was much more affordable for me than the traditional college route, so that’s what led me to pursue it.

When I received my license in 1995, I started working behind the chair at Supercuts. I slowly worked my way up the ladder to high-end salons. Five years later, I got a small suite at the Gallery of Salons and was an independent contractor. That was my initial stepping stone to running my own business.

My career has been a long road before I found success. Firstly I was a bar manager, then a soldier, then a bus driver, then a restaurant owner and chef. Finally, I decided to follow my grandfather's steps and become a barber. My grandfather was a barber on navy ships during WWI and WWII. I also worked in the UK for 5 years as a barber before opening in Malta.

The idea came about identifying a business opportunity and taking full advantage before the eventual competition, our success was the fact that we re-introduced old school barbering modernized and hip to cater for today’s gentlemen. In barbering, competition, when we started in Malta was non-existent. There were the typical hairdressers and 2 old school barbers which were unchanged since the ‘60s.

The idea was validated by my clients, one day a multi-millionaire came to get a haircut and I was discussing my concerns of growing and investing all my life savings into the business, his reply was “I just bought a company for 5 million euros over breakfast,” he just told me, “now is the time to invest and try creating something revolutionary.”

I always wanted to work for myself. So I was always thinking about business ideas. Not everyone wants to work for themselves and not everyone is suited to the lifestyle, so if you have the dream, make sure you pursue it!

My business started when I was working as a cook at a local reception venue. A bride wanted some local honey wedding favors, which I provided. Doing this made me find a jar supplier, register my home kitchen as a food premise, prepare an invoice, etc.

From here, I began selling honey to the public and then I experimented with other ideas (making jam, personalized wedding favors, etc) before going into skincare. I had quite a few failures in this period!

I created Sayar because I needed something better.

I dealt with hair loss, and wanted a safe way to stop it. In medicine, the ideal approach in treatment is to treat the actual causes. Treating underlying conditions is comprehensive and highly effective.

If your “entrepreneurship” is due to a desire for something you need to see in this world, the journey can bring you the highest point of satisfaction a human can find.

With backgrounds in design, development, interactive media and copywriting, we started out running a digital agency, building websites for clients, doing email, social media and advertising. It was good business, allowing us to earn a living while learning and practicing skills in the digital space.

The idea struck: Hair Ties...For Guys! We had it! The idea was funny, punchy, and a little ridiculous...it was perfect!

Even so we always believed the agency was a means to an end, and from the beginning we were searching for “our thing.” We tried a few ideas but nothing had really stuck, until we were driving home from a client meeting on a fateful day in April, 2014.

Hello! I’m Diane German, the owner of Hair Fetish LLC. I’m a licensed cosmetologist of four years and a salon owner of two. I style children, adults, and celebrities. I also have a product line ‘Agape Fetish’ in which I supply luxury silk bonnets, styling combs, the best edge control in south Florida, and more. As of 2020, my business has made over 90k.

My name is Eli Halliwell and I’m the co-founder and CEO of Hairstory, a company dedicated to rethinking everything about hair in a world where the old rules no longer apply.

Our business was founded in 2015, we’ve been self-funding since raising money from friends, and we are on pace to generate $30mm in sales this year, profitably.

• Vivian Kaye is the creator and CEO of KinkyCurlyYaki, a high-end black women's textured hair extension line that has grown to $6 million in sales without using paid advertising.
• She made the decision in 2012 to start a business that offered more than just high-quality, kinky, curly, and realistic-looking textured hair extensions.
• This brand offers a collection of 100% virgin human hair that is available in 6 textures and a wide range of coverage options to help you achieve your goal.
• The enterprise prospered in 2013 and made around $500,000 in sales in just one year of launching.

Read the full story on thestar.com ➜

Hello, my name is Ishan Dutta and I am the founder of Ugly Duckling Los Angeles, a hair products company catering to stylists and colorists.

We take in anywhere between 600 and 900 orders a month, with a conversion rate between 1%-2%, and an average cart value around $60 and trending higher.

The Complete Service is the opposite of The Essential Service, it costs more but we handle the entire process for the couple!

We have gone from doing 5 to 10 weddings a month to 80 to 100 weddings a month in 4 years.

My name is Lindsey McCoy and I am the CEO of Plaine Products, a hair and body care products company dedicated to ridding the world of single-use plastic bottles--one bathroom at a time. We’ve replaced the standard plastic shampoo bottle, found in shower shelves just about everywhere, with a reusable, refillable aluminum one. From there, our concept is simple. Instead of tossing the empty bottles into the recycling bin, our customers return them to us. We clean, sterilize and refill the empty bottles, and then send them out again.

When my family returned to the States, I joined forces with my sister, Alison Webster, and we focused on creating a packaging revolution. Our customers, like us, are interested in a more eco-friendly lifestyle, the appeal of which is becoming broader and broader each day. So far, with our customers, we have diverted over 300,000 plastic bottles from our landfills and oceans.