Jack & the Wolfe: F*%ked up… but fixed it!
As part of our ‘F*%ked up… but fixed it!’ series here on the HUB, we’re asking salon and barber shop owners to get real with us about a notable mistake they’ve made in their business and what they did to resolve it. This month we spoke to Jack Mead and Lydia Wolfe, owners of Jack & the Wolfe, an independent hair salon in the heart of Lymington about a funny yet notable oversight they made in the beginning stages of their business…
THE F*%K-UP
Back in 2021, when we were doing the renovation for our salon expansion, I ordered a beautiful sofa and armchair for our new waiting area. So, when the delivery man came, he delivered one beautiful four-seater sofa, one armchair and when I went to sign for the delivery and say thank you, “he said one more to go!”. Obviously, I thought he was joking…Turns out, he wasn’t joking, another massive sofa arrived, and he couldn’t take it back.
By being keyboard happy, I had managed to order two of the same items, an expensive mistake to make. What was worse was that our salon is a very narrow, very compact eighteenth century townhouse where we have to be very creative when it comes to space. So, with just a week until reopening and the furniture company refusing to take it back (it was made to order) and builders everywhere, we had nowhere to put this second sofa.
THE FIX
So, we had to keep it wrapped up in our very awkward tiny cellar until renovations were finished. Then, after we reopened, we spent the first couple weeks using our new waiting area as a show room for the sofa. Thankfully, eventually a client’s husband bought it off us, as a gift for his wife.
To many people it seemed crazy that I had managed to miss a whole extra sofa from our bank statement, but during a renovation you have considerable bills coming out left, right and centre and we were clearly just not checking hard enough. It’s safe to say that we triple check the basket whenever we’re buying online now – but most importantly it taught us to be diligent and thorough when looking at statements, always checking what’s going in and coming out!