Bondi Couple Talk About Their Global Men’s Grooming Brand
Patricks For Men is a high-end salon brand that started dealing with men’s grooming and hair extentions in Bondi Junction, founded in 2005 by Patrick Kidd and his wife, Aimee. The recently talked about their business, which has grown into a $15 million business, managing to grow 200% in 2018, with a month-on-month growth rate of 20%.
Patrick was originally a sparky operating in Bondi, getting haircuts from the local barbers, which he described as “sh*t”. He found a solution for both alongside his wife and so-called ‘real boss’, Aimee’, establishing the Patricks For Men high-end salon, with the first branch in Bondi Junction.
The business charged $60 for every cut, which was considered crazy at the time, compared to the average of $10-$20. In spite of that, Mr. Kidd says that salon took off, in a time where cheap barber shops where were most men ask for the haircut of celebrities, and women’s salons were foreign and not really good for the males.
With a $250,000 business loan, he founded the salon, which became the first licenced hairdresser in the AU, which took off.
Most people who handle grooming and hair extentions in Bondi Junction know that profit from a salon comes from upselling products rather than haircuts, with Patricks For Men coming in at the time when men’s grooming was on the rise across the AU. He wanted to find luxury men’s grooming products for the salon, but couldn’t find any, so he opted to make them himself, in cruder words.
He turned to one of the most famous formulation companies in the world, but received no replies. On a Hail Mary, he and Aimee went to the company directly, where he actually bumped into the CEO. In a stroke of luck, they ended up making a deal.
Said deal included four years of ‘testing’ the new products on Bondi clients, before officially launching, due to the formulation taking several years to finalize. The salon grew, turning over AU$1.25 million annually, and the hair care range was now stocked by some major retailers across the world, including Mr. Porter, Neiman Marcus, and Harrods, among others.
Mr. Kidd said that the Patricks brand took 9 years to finalize into the international success it now is, with the first seven years spent on just making the first product as perfect as possible.
