How to Nail Your Barbershop Branding in 7 Moves

A barbershop is an experience, not just a place providing fresh cuts and shaves. Here is how to make yours an unforgettable and recognizable brand that people will love to return to.

A visit to the barbershop is part need, part joy. You take some time for yourself and slow down. And in such places, the service itself is not the sole reason people return. They like authenticity, creativity and personal flair to the brand.

For a barbershop, that means a consistent brand identity and relatable values. You can build this identity by checking the mark on these elements of branding:

1. Name
2. Visual identity
3. Mission statement
4. Signage and interior design
5. Personalized products
6. Advertising
7. Website or social media

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1. Name

For the name of your barbershop, you need something that perfectly encapsulates your business but is also catchy and relatable to the audience you want to attract. It can be your name, a quirky and smart wordplay, based on the location… Anything that sounds well and elevates and explains what your business is about.

2. Visual identity

To create a strong visual identity, you need to define these key elements:

• Logo
• Visual strategy
• Color palette

The best way to start building a strong identity is to base it on insights and market research. After learning about your core audience, create a strategy that you will implement to position your brand on the market and achieve the perception you want from your customers. You can start compiling ideas and examples you like in the early stages and create a mood board that will help you stay in line with your style in the future. Here, you can learn more about making mood boards.

The logo and other visual elements, such as typography, color palette and symbols are extremely important because they can build recognition and people remember them easily. They need to be memorable, versatile, connected to the brand, distinctive and simple.

Base your visual strategy and color palette that you will stick to both with external and internal branding and advertising on current trends, color psychology, and of course, your core audience and its main interests.

So, before you start working on your own amazing branding for a barbershop, make sure you’ve taken care of these steps first:

• Research the market
• Decide on a mission statement and visual identity
• Develop the other elements of branding based on the strategy you’ve adopted
• Stay true to your brand, both externally and internally

3. Mission Statement

The main elements that will sell your mission statement to the core audience are:

• Motto
• Brand mission

Barbershops are increasingly popular amongst younger hipster populations, so focus your name and brand mission towards something millennials relate to most. Or, if you are trying to approach older customers with traditional barbershop services, keep it simple and straightforward.

If your selling point is that you are a neighborhood barbershop where people come for the experience and good company, make that the focus of your mission. If you are self-sustainable and only use vegan and cruelty-free products, make sure to mention that. If it’s a family business you have been keeping alive for generations, that is something to be proud of. Even something as simple as “You get a shave and a glass of bourbon” can be a statement that will attract.

Keep in mind that the motto and brand mission statement need to be something you truly believe in and stick to as a small business owner, but it also needs to sell your business as a unique service and experience. Here is a great example of this, for the branding of Local Barber Co. developed by Jarett Johnston.

4. Signage and interior design

Barbershops are well known for their red and blue barber poles and vintage signage. The barbershop aesthetic as a whole is recognizable and one possibly a staple of hipster design.

But of course, you can go further than just putting barber poles and your business name on the door. You can create vintage, engraved, or neon signs, or go as far as painting murals and graffiti on your wall. Local Barber Co. nailed this too, applying cool signage in both the exterior and interior of the barber shop. They used their color palette, general hip and youthful style, and custom typography in creating the aesthetic of the shop, keeping the American spirit and sense of community and neighborhood in the overall vibe.

A completely different approach, but still successfully implemented and effortlessly cool are the Victory Barbers barbershops in Canada, that fully adopted a 50s aesthetic with furniture, vintage signage, tools, deliverable… Everything in these barbershops looks like the set of Mad Men.

Promoting your brand in-house goes beyond the interior design and signage you use, too. You can brand your aprons, uniforms, stationery, the tools the other barbers use, like this example for Barba Bird branding from Dawid Cmok.

Use these examples as inspiration and find the style that you will base your whole tangible experience for the customer on. Of course, make sure that it is in line with the visual identity of your brand, both online and offline.

5. Personalized products

Another practical way to promote your brand and give something extra to your customers by having cool packaging designs on products you might sell. If you sell pomade, cream, lotion and other hair and beard care products, apply your logo and visual identity to it as well.

Just as the signage and branding of your tools and uniforms leave an impression when a customer visits, your products will have the same effect, but the customers will bring them home with themselves. And who doesn’t want beautifully designed packaging?

6. Advertising

After building a strong brand, you need to make sure people recognize it. Brand recognition is best and most quickly established through advertising, especially in the early phases of your business. Every household name started somewhere, and it probably took a lot of smart advertising and consistency of both the visual and branding strategy embedded in marketing to get the brand there.

Where you need to start is to base your ads, no matter if they are online or offline, on your mission statement, main values and visual strategy you’ve decided on. And of course, seek out good examples from companies that have been in your shoes.

7. Website or social media

The last, but not least important element of good barber shop branding is having a platform for customers to keep in touch, stay informed about working hours, news, location, products, etc. And that place is definitely a website, or if you can’t afford one right away, a Facebook or Instagram account that you will keep updated.

As with everything we said so far, keeping close to the brand mission and visual identity applies to this as well: stay true to your brand and be consistent in every marketing asset you’ve got.

For example, check out the Victory Barbers website.

Social media is also a great way to reach new customers and market your brand for free, especially if you implement a good strategy and quality content to boost your following. You can post behind the scenes videos, before and after transformations of haircuts and beard styling, the look of your salon, the people who are regular visitors, or your products. The possibilities are nearly endless.

You can see more great examples to learn from in our list of 15 Neat and Tidy Barber Logos, as well as fonts you can use in the selection of 15 Hip Barber Shop Fonts For Cutting Edge Businesses.

We hope you found this helpful. You can read more about visual and corporate branding on our blog. Good luck with creating your kick-ass brand!