Ben Perry
Ben Perry
Ben Perry - Old Fashioned Dartmouth Barbers
It is a good old fashioned barber’s shop and provides the perfect service for a certain type of man: you turn up without booking, you wait, you sit down, you ask for shorter hair, and after a few minutes and a nice chat you walk out with a perfectly sculptured hair cut.
It has been run, quietly and efficiently, for more than a decade by father and son team John and Ben Perry, with Ben at the helm.
“It’s brilliant for us both, coming across on the ferry to work,” says Ben, as he clears up after a busy Friday session. “It certainly beats sitting in a traffic jam on the M25!”
That day had been especially busy: supposedly open at 9am, Ben arrived at their Higher Street rooms at 8.45am to find men waiting on the street for his arrival. He did not stop until 2.35pm when I stroll up for our scheduled interview. He sweeps up hair and tidies the little room that overlooks Lower Street as we chat, as contented as a man can be in his work.
“Dartmouth is a bit special,” he said. “We have another shop in Torquay and although it’s great, I think here you get to know the customers better. Today I knew the names of the majority of those men coming through the door and knew a bit about them. It makes the job that bit more personal and enjoyable too.”
John Perry has had a business in Torquay for more than 30 years – a concern he set up after more than 15 years working for L’Oréal in the Midlands and around the country. He toured the country and was at the top of his profession, but wanted to live somewhere beautiful and chose to come to Torquay with his wife Anne.
He started ‘The Village Barbershop’ and began to build his business very successfully. A second shop followed and things were going nicely.
His son Ben was growing up fast and finding he hadn’t got a clue what he wanted to do with his life.
“Dad got me in the shop one Saturday and said - ‘Look, until you work out what you want to do in life, stand behind me there and watch me cut hair. If you learn that at least you’ll always have a trade,” Ben says. It was the only trade he needed.
Soon, Ben was cutting in the shop at weekends. I ask how nervous he was when cutting someone’s hair for the first time.
“SO nervous!” he laughs. “You are so hesitant in everything you do. People care so much about their hair, and you need to be quite close to them, so you become so nervous to start with. I didn’t want to pull people’s hair too much, or cut too much off even. But I had the old man behind me saying - Don’t be scared! Cut it! It’ll be ok! And after a while you start to build your confidence. It is definitely a skill, with men’s hair, because you have so little margin for error. Having said that I respect anyone who can work with long hair because I find that such a challenge!”
“Actually, even more nerve-wracking was using the cut-throat razor on a client for the first time, although you soon learn that’s one of the most straightforward skills.”
Soon Ben was off to college to take exams in his new profession, although he said he still learnt more from his father on Saturdays than in all the time he was at college. Both shops continued to thrive, until one member of their staff wanted to step up, and they arranged for him to take over the running of one of the shops. This freed them up to look for more opportunities.
“One day Dad was cutting the hair of a gentleman who was involved in the Freemason’s Lodge in Dartmouth. He said that they had a room at the lodge which used to house a barber but he had retired,” said Ben. “He suggested we take a look and it was perfect. We started to come across a couple of days a week and they were queuing out the door!”
Soon a prestigious client had contacted the pair.
“Dad cut the hair of a gentleman who happened to be the Commodore of the Britannia Royal Naval College,” he said. “The next week the Commander turned up and asked if we would go up to cut the cadets’ hair once a week. That was in 2003 and we’ve never looked back.”
Soon after they moved to the slightly larger premises in Higher Street and their success continued. John now works two days a week and has no plans to retire.
“I don’t think Dad will ever retire,” he said. “He has clients who have been coming to him for years – they will wait in the shop for hours for him to come in, even if there are others there to do the cut – they want to have their hair cut by John. It’s the same in Dartmouth – he has clients who wait for him to come across!”
Ben is now starting his own family with partner Victoria, a PR director he met at a rugby match at Twickenham in 2010 – their son Rufus is now 18 months old.
Would Ben like to see him learn hairdressing at his side as he did at his father’s?
“I would never try and influence what he wanted to do,” he says conscientiously, “but if he wanted to, it would be great to have three generations working in the business!”
First published December 2013 By The Dart