He gave free haircuts for 6 months outside his flat, now this 17-year-old barber has paying clients from all over S'pore

The stakes were high and I was a little anxious. I was about to go on a holiday and getting a haircut from an amateur barber was not on my pre-flight checklist.

And I could tell that my barber, 17-year-old Sujaish Kumar, was also nervous.

As the Republic Polytechnic business student draped the cutting cape over me with the swagger of a veteran stylist, the slight quaver in his voice betrayed him.

“This needs to be the best haircut,” he said. This was followed by some nervous laughter from both of us. 

I visited Sujaish’s four-room Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat in Telok Blangah after a video he posted on his TikTok account got me curious.

The video, titled “How much I make as a 17-year-old barber in Singapore”, racked up almost half a million views in October.

The popularity of his video was less to do with the answer to that question (it's S$150 for a total of 11 haircuts in a day) but more to do with his work space. 

The video shows him expertly snipping away at clients' hair along the corridor just outside his flat, with potted plants and his neighbours' festive decorations on their front door in full view. 

I had hoped for the same scenic location for my haircut, but by the time I booked a haircut with him in early December, the authorities had already paid him a visit after receiving complaints of “hairy litter”.

He complied with their request, though reluctantly, and moved his trade inside the flat where he lives with his parents and older brother. 

The living room space where he now works is no larger than a parking lot, yet Sujaish had dolled it up with the salon standard: Leather hot seat across a boxy mirror with a tabletop for his tools.

There are dark grey curtains for privacy and a makeshift waiting area in the form of a wooden bench, all of which were bought with the money he earned by giving haircuts.

The setup is humble but impressive. It is coincidentally the same words I would use to describe the teenager and his barbering journey over the past two years.

BAD, UNEVEN HAIRCUT SPURRED HIM TO START BARBERING

On the occasions I've gotten a terrible haircut at a salon, I have always found it hard to say anything other than "looks good" when asked by the stylist if I'm pleased with his work.

Then, I resort to sulking all the way home, thinking I could’ve done better and hoping that my hair will grow out quickly.

The difference between my interviewee and I is that he followed through on that thought to do better after a particularly appalling haircut.

Sujaish, along with his friend who were both Secondary 4 students then, received a "bad and uneven” cut from a neighbourhood barber at the start of 2023.

“They didn’t put in any effort. I told myself that I could do a better job and that six months later, I’ll be able to give my friends very good haircuts,” he recounted. 

The very next week, he clicked on YouTube videos to watch barbering tutorials. He then asked his friends in school if they would be interested in getting a free haircut.

Most declined, sensibly. Then, one brave soul agreed.

Armed with a pair of scissors and a cheap shaver, Sujaish and Client Zero made their way up a rooftop garden adjacent to their school building after the bell rang and Sujaish got to work.

It turned out horrible.

“He told me it was a nice haircut,” he recalled sheepishly. “I knew he was lying.”

The reserved but determined Sujaish endeavoured to improve his skills by watching more videos and convincing more supportive friends to give him a crack at his newfound endeavour. 

However, the six-month window he gave himself to do better than his neighbourhood barber was closing in. 

“The first five months, I wanted to give up many times because the haircuts weren’t going well,” he said.

“I didn’t get many clients. No one would really trust you with their hair.”

You could say that he had been a hair’s breadth away from quitting, but soon, people started to commend him on his work, not just out of politeness.

Word of his prowess as a barber spread around New Town Secondary School where he studied. Even the discipline master put in a request for a cut after the student finished his O-Level examinations.

Sujaish felt more confident to begin charging for his services then and started with a token sum of S$5. Whatever he earned went into buying better equipment that, he said, led to better-quality cuts.

His confidence rose and so did his prices: S$5 became S$8, which became S$12 and then S$15.

In recent months, a combination of media attention and his own viral videos skyrocketed demand for his haircuts, which he coined his “blends”. 

It was at this point that Sujaish's parents opened their minds (and living room) to their son’s pursuits. Initially. they had not seen their son's barber-ventures as more than a hobby that potentially detracted from his studies.

Servicing one or two customers each week used to mean a good week for Sujaish.

Now, he takes 25 to 35 bookings a week on average, charging S$20 a pop with customers who turn up in the southwest of Singapore, having travelled from all across the island.

The demographic of his clientele has even widened from boys around his age to men in their 30s, he said.

It was nothing short of a meteoric rise for a teenager who used to have to look for anyone willing to take up his offer of a free haircut. 

Still, the price point perplexes me for a self-taught barber with just two years under his belt.

“Surely, that’s a little expensive,” I remarked as a paying customer myself. 

He agreed that it was a little on the high side and he has lost some old customers because of this, but he was confident that he would continue to get many new ones. 

THE "JAISH BLEND" EXPERIENCE

Asked what exactly makes his “blends” different from others, Sujaish hesitated but hazarded a guess: He might not be as accomplished but he takes extraordinary care with each cut.

“Another barber once told me that it’s not just about the haircut. It’s the whole experience," he added.

Sujaish had been invited by that experienced barber to work at his salon for a day and the older man offered him some advice after noticing the introverted teenager going about his work mostly in silence.

“He told me that you can be a good barber, but if customers don’t have a good connection with you, the person usually won’t return."

At the start of my visit, we decided that he would give me one of his signature “blends” – a taper fade, where one’s longer hair on the top tapers down to a shorter length along the sides and back of the head.

After about a half hour, the nerves he visibly had at the start of the interview-plus-haircut had faded and the conversational skills he picked up over months of speaking with strangers in his own home was on full display.

He had even picked up a hint of salesmanship, telling me of the new line of hair products that he intends to push out next year.

I asked if he ever saw himself becoming a barber, or anything else for that matter, in his early years as a child.

Unlike when he was thinking about why he was a hit with customers, he did not hesitate in giving an answer to this question.

There had never been a plan or passion, he said matter-of-factly. 

Several of his childhood friends, who had been sitting by the side as supportive spectators all the while during the interview, concurred that they had not observed a single entrepreneurial bone in his body up until he started his home-based barbershop.

These days, what was once a hobby has evolved to much more than a side hustle and it has left him with less time to do much else.

Sujaish does not seem to mind this. 

“A haircut is like men's makeup,” he quipped. The low hum of the shaver he yielded next to my ear softened even more rather poetically at this point.

“I find it therapeutic while getting to know more about different people ... It makes me feel happy and I’ve always wanted to do something that I enjoy as work."

It was therefore not difficult at all to picture the fashionable young man with his own brick-and-mortar brand of barbershops in a couple of years.  

As it turns out, his plan is to put a university education on the backburner to focus on opening a physical salon away from his home.

However, there was a slight twist in the tale that I didn't quite expect: He also wants his salons to serve as tattoo parlours.

And yes, he wants to wield the tattoo machine, too.

“If I'm able to be a barber, I can definitely do tattoos,” Sujaish said with an assuredness that one might mistake for naivety.

“Anything that you put your mind to, you can achieve. If I tell myself that I can become a tattoo artist in the next two or three years, I think I’ll be able to achieve it.”

Whether or not he manages that feat remains to be seen, but what he has achieved, as evidenced by the mirror he held up by my sides, is a decent taper fade on my noggin.

I left his home that afternoon with a strange, uplifting belief that I could probably do whatever I wanted and be good at it with time. 

Perhaps the trendy hairdo popular with those a decade younger than me had something to do with it, but the spritely way in which Sujaish spoke of his future plans reminded me of a youthful exuberance the rest of us would do well to wield more of once in while.

Put more succinctly in his own words: “You just have to believe in yourself.”