Hair Cut - Salon

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 13 October 2020 16:03
Published: Saturday, 26 September 2020 22:02
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Hair Cutting:

One thing that I've always considered very expensive in USA is a hair cut. They cost about $60/hr (assuming $15 haircut in 15 minutes). Of course, it includes shop cost and the hair cutter themselves make barely anything. Even the hair franchisee doesn't make too much (the owner who operates the hair salon). It's mostly the franchisor who makes most of the profit. Most of the hair salon chain are franchisor, i.e greatclips, supercuts are examples of franchisor who trade on stock markets.

Hair cut Clipper settings:

Clipper run from 1 to 27 or something. Size 1 cuts the smallest hair, while higher numbered clipper leaves your hair longer. 1 implies size of 1mm i.e that clipper only leaves 1 mm length of hair on your head, while size of 6 implies size of 6mm.

From the consumer side also, going for a hair cut is a huge wastage of time and money. He/she has to drive somewhere, spend a lot of time sitting there, then someone cuts hair for 15 min, then drive back and take shower, which easily results in more than an hour of time for a 10 min job.

So, essentially hair cutting is a very inefficient process from both consumer and producer side. Cutting your own hair is a much more efficient process. A good quality hair cutter will cost you about $10 and will last for couple of years. However, you do need another person to cut your hair, as cutting your own hair isn't easy (atleast not for me).

1. Hair Salon: If you still don't want to invest in cutting your own hair, these salons may provide a relatively cheaper option to get your hair cut.

  • Great Clips: www.greatclips.com offers the cheapest option. You usually get coupons for $6 to $8 for basic haircut. If you don't get their coupons, you would want to sign up on their website.
  • Local Hair Salon: Other great place is www.groupon.com. You can search under local deals, and can usually get a hair cut for under $10 (by applying 20% off coupon for local deals that groupon has almost every month).
  • Training Institutes: These are hair styling training institutes that you'll have to search online. There are usually a few in any city. They cut hair for $5 or so. Hair cut quality is good, as they always have an instructor who is guiding them.

2. Hair Cutter/Trimmers: These are few hair cutters or trimmers that i've tried and they have worked well. there is no reason to spend anything more than $20 for any hair trimmer, as the expensive ones just have more bells and whistles, which aren't needed.

  • Braun hair trimmer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077HQ6WH4. I bought this for $20.It's cordless, and battery lasts for multiple hair cuts.
    • Use the Long Beard trimmer (#3) with setting of 17 to go over all of your head.
    • Then for close cut, use short beard trimmer (#2) with setting of 7 to go around your neck and ears.
    • There is precision trimmer (#4) that you use around your ears and sideburns, as it gets close to skin to remove all small hair.
    • There is stubble look trimmer (#1) with 2 other settings of 1 and 2 that you should never use. It cuts your hair so short, that your skin is visible. So, if you accidently end up cutting hair at a wrong spot with these, there is no way to recover. It also looks very weird on that spot as hair is basically gone. The lowest you should go is may be setting of 3 on beard trimmer, and that also on very bottom hairs around neck and ears. Safest way is to stick with setting of 7, then very carefully use setting of 5 if still needed around the edges. Setting of 3 should be avoided too, until you get experienced using these clippers.

While cutting your hair is hard, cutting others hair is not that difficult. So, you can provide reciprocal services to your spouse, room mates, etc. Watch a few basic hair cutting videos on youtube, and practise it while watching. One key skill to cutting with clippers is that clippers need to go from the edges of your head to the center of your hear, i.e clipper needs to pierce thru your hair. If you take your clipper from the center of your head, to edges of your head, then you will notice that clipper is just sliding on your hair without cutting hair. If hair is not getting cut, you are using the clipper in wrong way. Watch those videos again.

Practice your skills on your kids without fears of adverse repercussions. This is one rare place where having lots of kids helps you. After all, their hair do grow fast !!