BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently had a haircut at the excellent Pall Mall Barbers of Whitcomb Street, a side alley just off the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square. If you work in the West End, I thoroughly recommend it.

I’ve been going to this hairdressers’ for four years, back since it was called C. Rose, run by an ancient Italian gentleman called Luigi. Back then, it was a no-nonsense Italian barber shop, spare and wood-panelled with magnificent porcelain sinks. As soon as I was in the chair Luigi would make the same joke: brandishing his clippers and asking in a heavy accent if I wanted a number one grade buzz “as a present for your girlfriend”, taking rascally old-man delight (the highest form) in my confusion. The haircuts were professional and affordably priced – and in a theatrical flourish, every session ended with a cut-throat razor applied to the sideburns. Old school.

Luigi died two years ago, and a young stylist named Richard left a deputy position in a Mayfair salon to set up his own shop on the premises. I like what he’s done with the place. The prices have gone up, but are still fair. The porcelain sinks remain in situ, and despite a welcome lick of paint warming the air a little, the place has not lost its old-fashioned sobriety. A stylised barber’s pole twirls outside the shop.

Richard’s sensibilities may be traditional, but his business methods are modern. I had assumed that it would take a lot of business planning to open a salon, but once it was open, you would just cut hair and charge money. Not so; at least not for Richard.

We talked a little shop and he outlined many interesting ideas, but one in particular struck me as innovative. The two obvious marketing fronts to me would be expanding the customer base through advertising on the one hand, while retaining existing customers through good service and competitive pricing on the other. Perhaps you could also extract more value out of your existing clientele by selling them hair products. Richard has identified a new front, however: extracting more value out of your existing clientele by convincing them to get their hair cut more often.

His logic is compelling and true to my own experience. The average gentleman simply leaves it too long between haircuts. At some point, we notice our hair getting a little shaggy. We mention to a friend or colleague that it might be about time to get a haircut. Invariably – at least in my case – they reply, “No, on the contrary I think it looks quite nice.” Why they lie so, I do not know: the hair is clearly too long. Nevertheless this then somehow gives me mental leave to put off getting my hair cut for a further two weeks, at which point the haircut is virtually a medical necessity.

Richard posits that the life expectancy of a gentleman’s haircut is one month. Of course, he has a vested interest in claiming this. If we take this to be true, we will end up spending more money on haircuts. But as he argues, why should men be happy to spend all kinds of money on designer clothes and expensive watches, and then be prepared to spend a third of their lives walking around with overgrown hair for the sake of a few quid? Let us accept this monthly chore with good grace – after all, is it not basically an enjoyable experience?

To this end he is proposing to launch a text messaging service for regular clients. I look forward to receiving my monthly reminder to look in the mirror.

I wish he'd bring back the cut-throat razor though.

BUSINESS NEWS

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, featured in the films Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Trading Places, announced today that it would begin listing a futures contract for nursery-rhyme staple dry whey in March.

Whey is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained and is a by-product of the manufacturing of cheese. Whey that is dried has traditionally been used in a variety of foods such as crackers, breads, cereal, commercial pastries and animal feed. In recent years, dry whey, which is high in protein and low in fat, has been used in the increasingly popular energy and power bars as well as protein drinks and powders.

"With the growing consumption of energy drinks and power bars, dry whey is increasingly in demand thereby creating more frequent imbalances between supply and demand, often as a result of spider-based supply shocks," said John Harangody, director of CME Commodity Products. "As a result, dry whey has become a volatile commodity. CME can provide buyers and sellers of dry whey future price protection, hedging opportunities as well as a mechanism for price discovery."

The CME does not at present offer a contract for curds, which TUPNews thinks is something of a missed opportunity. Think of the arbitrage opportunities!