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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Mobile barbershop making a mark

by

Jesse Ramdeo
809 days ago
20230312
Kyle Marecheau prepares to give GML Reporter Jesse Ramdeo a haircut within his mobile babershop

Kyle Marecheau prepares to give GML Reporter Jesse Ramdeo a haircut within his mobile babershop

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A white VIP sprint­er bus juts out from the Clifton Hill beach fa­cil­i­ty’s park­ing lot on a swel­ter­ing Mon­day af­ter­noon.

At first glance it is easy to think that a tour op­er­a­tor may have been con­tract­ed to trans­port ea­ger re­main­ing for­eign­ers or mem­bers of the T&T di­as­po­ra to a last-minute post-Car­ni­val cool down be­fore de­part­ing our shores.

But you would be wrong be­cause when the door slides open you will be one on one with a ful­ly out­fit­ted and op­er­a­tional bar­ber­shop that has been on the road for the last three months.

“Cut to suit” is a phrase 33 -year-old Kyle Marecheau, the own­er of Kyle Kutz, knows all too well.

The say­ing can be trans­lat­ed as act­ing in ac­cor­dance with one’s fi­nan­cial lim­i­ta­tions and it is some­thing the Cochrane Vil­lage res­i­dent has been con­tin­u­ous­ly chal­leng­ing as he seeks to break through the lim­i­ta­tions through his en­tre­pre­neur­ial prowess.

Marecheau’s mo­bile bar­ber­ing ap­proach is putting a twist to an ex­pe­ri­ence that many look for­ward to.

While a bar­ber­shop can be a space for con­ver­sa­tions, laugh­ter and “ole talk”, it can al­so be an ex­er­cise in pa­tience for those wait­ing to be styled. It is why he has added wheels to his shop and has not tak­en away from the in­ter­ac­tion many have come to love.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian Marecheau ex­plained how the wait­ing game played at bar­ber­shops was not one he was will­ing to keep play­ing and why he dug deep to find a so­lu­tion.

“What made me get in­to bar­ber­ing was the long wait to get a hair­cut, I hon­est­ly hat­ed that since I was a child. My mum used to send me to the bar­ber­shop every Sat­ur­day in the morn­ing when car­toons were go­ing on and I not leav­ing the bar­ber shop un­til like three in the af­ter­noon, for me that was tor­ture.”

Marecheau ex­plained the fi­nal straw to break his bar­ber­shop bond was at the age of 16 when he was forced to wait over sev­en hours for a hair­cut that was ur­gent for a job in­ter­view.

Sev­en­teen years lat­er and Marecheau’s jour­ney with bar­ber­ing con­tin­ues and with his de­vel­op­ing skills and grow­ing clien­tele, he knew he would have to think out of the box in or­der to ex­cel up the path.

“I was ir­ri­tat­ed at hav­ing to wait by the bar­ber, so I was like, I don’t mind be­ing a bar­ber but I don’t want to be the reg­u­lar bar­ber. For me as a busi­ness­man I used to say that is time-wast­ing, you sit down and wait three to four hours for a trim, you know how many things I could do with­in that time. I told my­self I am com­ing with a dif­fer­ence. I want to be able to come to my clients, they can stop what they do­ing at that mo­ment give me time to cut their hair and then they go di­rect­ly back at what they were do­ing, that is how it start­ed, I saw a prob­lem and found a so­lu­tion.”

Even­tu­al­ly, Marecheau would come to a cost­ly cross­road.

“I saw this ve­hi­cle when I start­ed trim­ming, I said I want to be dif­fer­ent. I sat at work and I was like what can I do to be dif­fer­ent, at first, I was think­ing to buy a portable AC then I was like that will not make sense, it might be too much.


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