Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop started in Red Deer, Alberta in 2009. It’s now past 100 locations across Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand, just picked up back-to-back Best Health & Beauty Franchise wins, and keeps expanding.
Skilled barber shortages are a real, industry-wide problem right now. Tommy Gun’s has built a specific answer to it: a real career ladder from barber to franchise owner, backed by Tommy Gun’s University, its in-house training platform.
And Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop is expanding hard right now. It has strong BC and Ontario growth, with at least one location doing seven figures in gross sales. Many owners went from barber to franchisee.
What began in 2009 as one Canadian barbershop with a vision to reinvent the traditional barbershop experience has grown into one of the world’s fastest-growing premium barbershop brands.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Keenan Fisher, CEO of Tommy Gunn, spoke about the brand’s growth.
Since launching in 2009, Tommy Gun’s has grown to more than 100 locations across Canada, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. What have been the key drivers behind that growth, and how has the brand evolved as the business has scaled?
I think the key drivers behind our growth have been our focus on always being a leader and innovator in our space. We’ve consistently worked to lead in systems, experience, and brand across every market we operate in.
Because we have a relentless focus on continuing to evolve the brand and guest experience, we’ve been able to enter new markets at a quicker pace than many of our competitors and outpace the growth of the industry.
Another key driver has been our commitment to the success of our franchise owners. We’ve built a strong model that has resulted in very few closures and low franchise owner turnover. That consistency has created compounded success over the years.
As we’ve scaled, we’ve also never strayed from our people-first focus. We’ve leveraged technology to enhance every part of the experience around it, while maintaining the same core values that have been part of the business from the beginning. As a 100% privately held Canadian family business, we’ve maintained that family-oriented approach from 10 locations to more than 100.
How many new locations does Tommy Gun’s expect to open over the next three to five years, and what markets or regions are the biggest priorities for expansion?
Over the next three to five years, we plan to open approximately 30 to 50 new locations in Canada and 50-plus internationally.
In Canada, Ontario and British Columbia continue to represent some of our biggest opportunities, with strategic growth planned in the Maritimes and Prairie provinces as well.
The U.S., Australia, and New Zealand are still much earlier in their growth paths, so there is a significant amount of open market and opportunity for expansion in those countries.
What does the current Tommy Gun’s location model look like in terms of company-owned versus franchised stores, and how important is franchising to the brand’s future growth strategy?
Franchising is everything to us. We believe organizations and networks work best when they’re fully committed to a specific path, and we are completely committed to the franchise structure.
We’ve built our organization to provide an incredible level of franchise support and have developed the infrastructure required to support successful growth through franchising.
All our locations are franchise-owned, and it is our mandate and strategy to continue growing that way. Franchising is critically important to the future of Tommy Gun’s.
As Tommy Gun’s expands internationally, how do you maintain a consistent brand and customer experience while adapting to different markets? And what have you learned from operating across multiple countries?
The two key pillars for maintaining consistency in our brand and guest experience are having great systems, measurements, and tools, and pairing those with the right partners and people.
That includes our support office team, our master franchise partners in Australia and New Zealand, and strong, well-suited franchise partners throughout our network.
One thing we’ve learned from operating across multiple countries is that the essence of the Tommy Gun’s brand and experience resonates across a wide variety of markets.
At the same time, there are always nuances between countries, whether they’re related to consumer expectations, or the overall guest experience. Making that 10 to 20 per cent adjustment to suit each individual market is what allows us to remain relevant and successful while still maintaining the core Tommy Gun’s experience.
Having strong master franchise partners, including Luke and Grace in Australia, has also allowed us to grow and expand overseas in ways that would be much more difficult to accomplish without knowledgeable local partners.
Looking ahead, what are Tommy Gun’s biggest growth opportunities beyond adding locations, including plans for customer experience, technology, services, partnerships, or other areas of the business?
One of our biggest strengths is our ability to continually evolve our systems andguest experience.
We aim to be leaders in technology and innovation, as well as in the overall guest experience. We’re continually implementing and launching new proprietary technologies that improve operations within the shops, strengthen our back-end analytics, and enhance the way we support and operate the network.
At the same time, we’re continuing to improve how we engage with our guests, both inside and outside of our locations. The goal is to enhance the guest experience across every touchpoint and continue finding new ways to make the Tommy Gun’s experience more seamless, convenient, and engaging.
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