Basement salon put him on path to his own barbershop

William Biney greets a 20-something customer with a handshake and hands him a pair of slippers on a chilly March afternoon.

These old-fashioned courtesies are integral to the "experience" the 25-year-old offers visitors to his popular Pierrefonds-Roxboro barbershop.

"You walk into a lot of barbershops and don't feel like a person - you feel like a number," he said at his elegant Quality Cuts Salon last week.

Old episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air played on a flat screen television in the background as Biney and his three apprentices expertly wielded clippers and scissors on clients.

Sunlight poured through a window while a group of young men waited quietly on the couch and upholstered window bench.

Biney - who may be the youngest barbershop owner in the Montreal area - began trimming his own hair at age 11, after experiencing one too many bad haircuts.

Friends admired the results and were soon asking him to cut their hair, too.

Word of his quality $5 haircuts spread quickly throughout the Dollard des Ormeaux community where he grew up.

By the time he was 15, a steady stream of teenagers were regularly heading down the stairs of the family home to his basement "salon" setup.

"The more people that came, the more my mother was like: 'You know, you're going to have to start doing this somewhere else,' " he recalled with a laugh.

So he moved on to apprentice at a clutch of barbershops and local hair salons for several years before eventually deciding to venture out on his own.

"At first, nobody believed I was taking it seriously," he said.

Not wanting to take out a bank loan, he headed out west to Fort McMurry in Alberta where he worked in the oilsands industry for 18 months, carefully socking away all his earnings.

"It's easy to save money because they pay for your housing and other expenses," he said.

Upon his return, he invested $25,000 to equip and decorate the barbershop, which opened for business on Dec. 7. The location, a busy strip mall on Sources Blvd., was selected for its convenience and the multicultural characteristics of the neighbourhood, he said, adding that he didn't want to appear "too upscale" or intimidating.

Biney, who moved to Montreal from Ghana when he was 3 years old, said he also wanted to show customers that a blackowned barbershop doesn't have to have a gangster edge.

"Black isn't 'ghetto,' " he said. "Some barbershops behave that way. I'm trying to make everyone feel good."

To that end, he said that his clients hail from many different backgrounds - not just the black community.

"Black, white ... the colours of a rainbow," he said.

Small business expert Ralph Cecere commented on the barbershop's potential for success:

"Hair grows, so it is almost a guaranteed employment," said the professor who teaches at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management. "The only thing is the competition. If he has a unique way of serving his clientele - upscale, but with reasonably priced approach - that would be maybe very different."

Read full article: The Gazette, March 7, 2011