How could you NOT love this story?

I love, love, love this story, which ran as a heart-warming non-Christmas tale in the Boston Globe on Chrismtas morning.  

Tim Almeida is a barber, but he doesn't operate out of neighborhood storefront with a striped barber pole on the sidewalk outside its doors. 

No, Almeida owns The Clippership, a "mobile barber shop, [which] was renovated to resemble a cozy wooden sailboat cabin."

First off, props for the clever name! Love, love, love...

Here's how his thriving business came about: 

When covid struck in 2020, the barbering biz pretty much dried up. Who wanted to risk death for a fade? 

I know what I did hair-wise during covid. I let my hair go gray. And when I saw my hairdresser for a trim, it was in my sister's backyard, where Rita came to give me and Kath haircuts and my brother-in-law a trim beard. We all wore masks.

Like Rita, when covid came along, Almeida began making house calls. And then:

He saw a YouTube video about a mobile barbershop and decided to piggy back off the concept by starting one of his own. To stand out, Almeida, a self-described “boat guy,” wanted the inside of his van to resemble a sailboat cabin. (Source: Boston Globe)

He found a guy to help him figure out how to kit out his van, and he was soon on the road. 

One reason for Almeida's success is that he specializes: men's fades and straight razor shaves. He also specializes in a certain Cambridge market: life science campuses. When he realized that a lot of his clients were in the life sciences, he "set up contracts with several campus management companies for weekly walk-in periods."

Tim Almeida just seems like a naturally smart business man and entrepreneur, attributing:

...part of his success to his ability to figure out the logistics of a mobile business. He maps concentric routes around the city, starting close to home and building out the route to maximize the number of daily appointments he can schedule. He learned how to be his own handyman, repairing things like frozen pipes and reinsulating the van after his first winter.

According to his clients, it helps that he's a great barber with a very likeable personality. But underneath that talent with the clippers, his likeable personality, he remains a savvy business guy who hopes someday to franchise his business. I hope he succeeds. And I hope he also franchises his concept to hairdressers, not just barbers. 

Go, Tim Almeida!

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A link to The Clippership