What's happening is your boy Byron from Urban Television we're in Kensington Market here
to check out proper barbers and see what's so proper about them and see if you can get
some proper cuts, alright? Peace, let's go.
What's up? I'm sitting here with the owners of proper barbers. This is Lewis and Chico.
So give me a little bit of the origin of proper barbers up to this point. Alright, so we started
real small in the back of a clothing boutique called Fusy West and when it was time to grow
as a business and as a brand, me and Chico decided to move to a bigger and better spot
where we started with some fresh energy and we ended up with people. Bigger location,
better barbers, better service, proper barbers. Hence the proper barbers monitor. So we were
inside, I got to see the shirts, you had the shirts going with the proper barbers logo,
you had the hats going with the proper barbers logo, your tool kits, your barbers kits, had
the proper barbers logo on it, you're really big on your branding. How important is that
for any real startup in the city? Who will have their branding in check? He can either
make you or break you because if all you have is branding and nothing to back it up, then
when the truth comes out, people will just be like, oh, he's nothing but branding. But
ours is more like a trademark, right? It's like a certificate of quality. Right. When
you start being in the proper barbers, you are the proper barbers. I can't tell you yet.
But yeah, so it's more like a trademark, you know, it's a certificate of quality. Not
so much. You can really back it up. We can say we can back up our service and the way
we treat everyone. We go for more like urban, old school, and we try to serve like all kind
of clients. Like anybody that walks into our barbershop, we're cutting them. That's our
main one, one thing. So we didn't want to take one, one market, one segment. I just
decided that their barbering is really broad. You just focus on, you know, like the old
school corridors or like this tricky fades and you're going to lose some elements. So
we just decided to focus on the people overall, you know, the aspect of our barbers. In a multicultural
city like Toronto, though, if you didn't think that way, that might hurt you. Right. Yeah.
So we were focusing on more like old school, new school, and mix it up all together. With
that urban culture. With that urban culture. And, you know, for those specific ones, those
shops already exist. So when we tell the opportunity, it wasn't combining everything. Right. Because
there is that shop for like this link back old school haircut. Right. There's that shop
for like strictly fades. Only clippers come out. So you guys are not just adding something
to the Kensington, you're actually adding something to the Barber game together in Toronto. It's
not. Yeah. Well, in a sense, yeah, but it's not like we're adding. We're just like, we're
making sure we stand by what a proper barber should be able to do. Right. So it shouldn't
just be about cutting with scissors or doing clippers. Chico knows the entire range. So
in a sense, like you said, any client that comes to your chair, no matter what color,
size, age, whatever, we'll get a proper service. We go from hair styling to do fades, to do
straight shaves, to go, we can layer a man's hair and we can also do a fade. So it's, we're
really focusing on length and fades also. And so just in the time that I was sitting
up in the barber shop, I saw a lot of intricate work happening, almost like art. So I guess
the question is, sort of like how chefs kind of feel like what they do is an art form or
dancers feel like what they do is an art form or graph artists, what they do is an art form.
Do you feel like barbering is kind of like his own art form or that it shouldn't be?
I think barbering is, it's an art because everybody has different, different touch,
different feelings. Because when I do a haircut, I put my feeling into the passion and that's
when it comes to my art in kind of way, right? So yes, it is an art and I consider it as
I'm an artist. So therefore, I think everybody upstairs up there in the barber shop, they're
all artists. I can't, I couldn't find a better team right now. I feel so, so grateful. Finding
Lucho, my partner, like all the barbers that we have right now. We're really trying to
make a family. Yeah. Yeah. So well, I think that's all I'm going to ask. I got to say
something though. I agree with you 100%. What you guys are doing is an art form. It's not
just like I'm just going to go home. So that being said, being that you're in Kensington,
ironically, you landed in the first place being the artist part of Toronto. So congratulations.
Thank you very much. Wish you more luck. Thank you.
How's it going? We're the proper barbers. Check us out at urbantelevision.ca.
