Not your usual uncle job: These teens are barbers on the side
Everyone has a go-to person for their hair, and for a growing clientele, the go-to person for their next fade is not a veteran, but 19-year-old Sujaish Kumar or 14-year-old Keanu Akbar.
While it’s easy to dismiss their work as a hobby, these two students have built successful brands from the ground up, earning recognition online and off—endeavours that gave them purpose after completing their studies.
Vulcan Post speaks to Sujaish and Keanu to find out how they paved their own way for themselves and other younger barbers in the old school trade.
Both of them picked up barbering by watching online videos
Getting a decent haircut was often a nightmare for Sujaish. He shared that ‘good barbers’ often charged S$30—out of budget for him and his friends in secondary school—leaving them to patronise shops that provided S$10-S$12 haircuts.
Unfortunately, keeping to that budget mean that the haircuts often came out uneven and messy. Frustrated, Sujaish decided to take matters into his own hands, challenging himself to provide better haircuts. The next day, he started watching tutorials on YouTube and TikTok.
“I had about S$50 saved up, so I just spent that on a pair of clippers. Then I basically had to beg my friends to let me cut their hair.” But even with having the right tools, the execution turned out to be harder than he thought.
“The first few haircuts were really really bad, uneven, and kind of demotivating,” Sujaish sheepishly shared, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to hone his craft, providing free haircuts for family, friends and their acquaintances at his HDB corridor.
Through word-of-mouth, Sujaish eventually gained a sizable following. Five months after he started, his cuts were good enough for him to charge S$5, which soon rose to S$8 per head. He also began promoting his services on TikTok, and one viral reel further grew his clientele base.
Even though he had to move his chair to his home upon receiving orders from the Housing Development Board (HDB), he continued making a name for himself online as a young barber, inspiring others, like Keanu, to do the same.
At the tender age of 12, Keanu was encouraged by his older brother to pick up barbering as a hobby, and he got him a set of tools to help him get started. As it turns out, Keanu’s older brother is friends with Sujaish himself, and that inspired his own suggestion.
Keanu shared a similar learning trajectory: picking up his skills from online tutorials and offering free haircuts for his family and friends to sharpen them. He started charging just S$3 per haircut after a year of practice and performed his services on a staircase at his HDB in Clementi. Word soon spread of his services, which helped him land an interview with local publication AsiaOne, which put his name out to the masses.
But beyond those opportunities, how did they actually sustain beyond the hype—one as long as their veteran seniors?
Scaling up a word-of-mouth service
While the traditional, word-of-mouth method got them started, both Sujaish and Keanu quickly diversified their reach, leaning heavily into social media, particularly TikTok, to scale up.
Going viral is not an easy feat, but Sujaish achieved just that with a video titled ‘How much I make as a 17-year-old barber in Singapore,’ where he earned S$195 in a single day. This financial transparency not only drew netizens but also attracted Singaporean news outlets Mothership and CNA.
Similarly, Keanu’s interview with Asiaone put him on the radar for more clients. The 14-year-old shared that since the interview, his Telegram subscribers doubled from around 150 to 350, and his TikTok following tripled from approximately 400-500 to 1,200.
However, viral success came with unforeseen challenges. Sujaish’s video caught the attention of the HDB, who informed him he could no longer operate in the corridor due to potential disturbance to neighbours, prompting him to move operations back inside his home.
Despite the change in settings, Sujaish continued to build his brand and reinvest his earnings for better tools and setups. He has also since raised his starting price to S$30 per haircut and started receiving requests from customers for house calls, where he could get paid a higher price of S$50.
This additional revenue stream gave Sujaish enough funds to open his own studio at Potong Pasir, which was around 100 sqft, or equivalent to a master bedroom in an HDB flat. While moving to a studio resulted in him forking out more than S$1,000 for flooring, rental and upgrades, he believes it was a gamble worth taking.
“Even from when I started, my goal was always to have my own private area where I could do my haircuts, and cutting hair at home was disturbing my family.”
Keanu has also moved his workstation to his home, not because he was told to, but out of a personal desire to provide a more comfortable experience for his clients. “Usually when it rains, I have to cancel my appointments because [my workspace] will get very wet and then people won’t like it.”
Beyond the fade
Aside from being able to earn from their side hustle, the trade has also instilled skillsets and qualities that can be used beyond barbering.
A self-proclaimed introvert, Keanu shared that picking up barbering helped him to gain confidence in engaging with strangers. “When I’m with my friends, I talk a lot. But other than that, I was really quiet in Primary school.”
Time management was also another skill he gained. He shared that he dedicates two and a half hours on selected weekdays and six hours on weekends, with the remainder of the time spent on his studies and leisure with family and friends.
“Maybe I’m not living like the full 14-year-old, but I don’t mind it.”
For Sujaish, barbering has allowed him to learn the foundations of building a business, from marketing himself to learning the operations. These allowed him to have an ambition to work towards opening a full-fledged barbershop and even starting a haircare brand.
Overall, both of them showed a new age of barbers that bring modern trends and tactics to a trade once seen as an “old man’s job” into a career still relevant in the modern world.
- Learn about our protagonists here:
- Read more stories we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.
Featured Image Credit: Sujaish Kumar/ Keanu Akbar