With impeccable cool, and an irredeemable street style, Sean Bryan's Cut & Sew is bucking trends and setting new ones and, inter alia, giving entrepreneurship a fun name. Bryan and his company have come a long way in three years; from a basement start-up to three dynamic barber shops, a select speakeasy, clothing line, staff of 15 and sky's-the-limit future. Give Cut & Sew another year and it will have added a barber school and shops in Dundrum, London and NYC.
Bryan, the company's owner and founder, is just 29 and has the air of a genie out of the bottle. He is "almost certain Cut & Sew is the fastest-growing barber shop chain in Ireland. Almost certain." He's absolutely certain that his brand and team are "on a par with anything they have in London and LA. I've been there and I know."
His keys to success are team and brand. He began alone, working and grafting to get the company up and going. The decor, design, risks and ideas are all his, but the team he has put together is what makes it work, everyone’s input invaluable, everyone’s creativity a plus.
Irreverent vibe
Bryan and the team are the brand too, inseparable from the old/new cool of it all, the irreverent vibe, the relaxed welcome, the assured, meticulous professionalism, the promise of fun times. Customers like it. They like the clothes too, black with white lettering.
Bryan used to be a graffiti artist – street name Konk – jobbing as a ladies hairdresser by day. "I got into trouble for criminal damage, realised I had to focus on a career. Olan, the owner of All City Records in Crow Street, gave me a rent-free basement space for a few months. I got a mirror from my mother's house, a chair from my aunt, set up on Facebook and Instagram and did haircuts.
“There’s a good culture in Crow Street, the record shop’s great. People came and really vibed off the place. Within six months I was so busy I’d taken on staff.” That first year, with no capital outlay, he “saved every penny” until he had €5,000. “I got a nice barber’s chair and built-in units and it all took off.”
The decor, unique to each shop, is part of the company’s way of being in the world. BlindEye Barbershop in George’s Street Arcade is the newest of the three and has a hidden Speakeasy to the rear (BlindEye shares floor space with The Market Bar on Fade Street).
Speakeasy
Nostalgia is the theme in both shop and speakeasy, manifest in a vaulted ceiling; wall tiles from the original arcade; a door from Harland and Woolf to the speakeasy, lamps from a Ukrainian shipyard; art by Banksy and an NYC graffiti artist on the walls; and ceiling lights which, when you lean back, spell “F**k Me”.
Most team members are ex-hairdressers. “Not all male either; I’ve got two women working for me now,” Bryan says. “Our branding is strong and we’ve a big online presence. We don’t stick to rules, that’s why people like us and come every week. Every customer is important. How you treat people is important. We’re not interested in celebs who come in and don’t pay.”
They've had pop-ups at music festivals – Electric Picnic, Forbidden Fruit and Metropolis in the RDS. Immediate plans include a barber school and a shop in Dundrum. "I'm living my dream," Bryan says, with a little help from his friends/team.
