Why The Short Hair Skills Gap Is A Business Problem

When teams avoid short hair, salons aren’t just missing a skill, they’re creating an invisible revenue leak, says That Barber Bloke’s Laura Denton

by AMANDA | EXPLORE

As a salon owner trying to grow a young team, I found myself stuck in a frustrating cycle that I know many other owners will recognise.

Our junior stylists had space in their columns, but they were avoiding short hair. Meanwhile the busiest stylists, often the salon owners themselves, were filling every small diary gap with gents’ cuts and short styles. It wasn’t because the team didn’t want to work or didn’t have the talent. The reality was simpler: they didn’t feel confident cutting short hair.

When my business partner and I were both working full time on the salon floor, it became a real pressure point. The small pockets of time we had set aside for admin were constantly getting filled with short hair clients because the rest of the team simply weren’t comfortable doing them. And as salon owners, you can’t just turn clients away. You’ve got wages to pay, targets to hit and a reputation to protect.

This Wasn’t An ‘Us’ Problem

What we started to realise was that this wasn’t just our problem, it’s a much wider industry issue. Over the last few years, through coaching groups and conversations with other salon owners, I’ve heard the same story again and again. Graduate stylists are coming into salons with very limited experience of cutting short hair or using clippers.

Barbering is no longer part of the Level 2 hairdressing curriculum, which means many stylists simply aren’t exposed to those skills early in their training. As a result, salons are often picking up that responsibility later on, once stylists are already working on the salon floor.

When you’re running a busy business, finding the time to teach those fundamentals properly can be incredibly difficult. And that’s where the confidence gap begins…

A gap in early training quickly turns into a lack of confidence on the salon floor, and confidence, or lack of it, changes behaviour. Stylists avoid short hair appointments. They panic when a client asks for a restyle. They watch quick tutorials on TikTok or YouTube in the staffroom minutes before the client sits in the chair. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not fair on them either.

Rob Denton overseeing students

A Commercial Reality Salon Owners Can’t Ignore

Short hair clients are some of the most loyal and consistent clients a salon can have. A skin fade client might return every one to two weeks. A classic short back and sides every four or five weeks. A short women’s cut every five or six weeks to keep the shape looking right.

Compare that to a balayage client who might visit two or three times a year. While colour services may bring in a higher ticket price on the day, short hair creates something just as valuable for a salon: predictable, repeatable income.

When teams avoid short hair, salons aren’t just missing a skill, they’re creating an invisible revenue leak. Clients get turned away, passed between stylists or experience inconsistent results, which ultimately affects retention and reputation.

For us, the turning point came when I realised we couldn’t solve this problem on our own.

I simply didn’t have the time to train every technical detail while also running the business. The team needed hands-on guidance with short hair cutting, but finding the right support wasn’t easy.

A Helping Hand

That’s when I asked my husband, Rob – a barber in Chelmsford for more than 30 years – to help the team. I asked him to spend time working with them, breaking down the fundamentals in a calm and practical way. What made the biggest difference wasn’t just the technical knowledge, it was the way he taught it. Patient, hands-on and completely judgement-free. Instead of making short hair feel intimidating, he helped the team understand the structure behind it.

Once the fear disappeared, something interesting happened. Our younger stylists started saying yes to short hair clients instead of avoiding them. Confidence grew, rebooking improved and short hair appointments became part of the everyday rhythm of the salon rather than something passed around to the busiest stylist.

It was during this time that the idea for That Barber Bloke was born, not as a business plan, but as a response to a real skills gap we had experienced ourselves. Because once you see the confidence shift in a team, you realise how much opportunity short hair can unlock for a salon.

Short hair shouldn’t be seen as a niche skill. It’s part of the foundation of hairdressing. And if we don’t rebuild confidence in that foundation, the skills gap will only keep growing.

A new short-hair education portal designed to help salon teams build confidence in cutting and clipper work is coming soon from That Barber Bloke. Click here for the chance towin one month’s complimentary access.