Robert Rogers, Director of Haight Ashbury Boutique Salons Limited, talks about his life and career.

Early Days

I started my career in 1969. Back then, I was a young man aged 16 years, with no direction in my life. I spent most of my days surfing on the coast of Paraparaumu, having spent all my childhood at schools at this location.

As a 13-year-old I always wanted to follow in my Dad’s footsteps as a cabinet maker. Wood craftsmanship fascinated me and I just loved the smell of timber. My father owned his own business, and it was the natural way for me to proceed. Unfortunately, the education system moved me in a direction of book-keeping and commercial practices. I hated it and my education, and consequently failed it!

Around this time, fate intervened once more. My father lost all his fingers in a tragic accident and his cabinet-making business was closed.

One of the things I learned from school was that I had a talent in art, constantly drawing and painting large murals on my bedroom walls of my favorite rock stars. Jimi Hendrix was one of the best.

This artistic ability was noticed by a neighbor, a hairdresser from Scotland. Given her predisposition for styling, she raved about how men were becoming successful hairdressers in Europe.

It was a long shot... she was, after all, talking to a surfy with long salty dreadlocks, and no experience with even a comb!

After a long deliberation and moral support, I convinced my best mate that if we tried it out, we could have a lot of fun meeting the opposite sex. We both agreed we needed a change, and a trade.

Armed with new enthusiasm, we ventured to a school of hairdressing - the Continental Hairdressing Academy in Wellington.

I funded my new career by working in a timberyard doing hard labor, stacking timber piles by hand; this was to be the best work out for the body. It was a funny contrast: splinters by weekend, soft hands by week.

The academy was good fun, and lived up to our hopes - mostly girls and just one other guy in addition to us. Although initially we were hopeless, our tutor was patient and maintained that, in 12 months, we would come out tops. We did.

We were automatically offered jobs in a plush salon, amusingly named “Airline Beauty Lounge”. It was huge. There were 20-25 hairdressers, and each person was recognized by the stripes on their lapel: one for juniors, two for intermediate and three for senior.

The smell of hairspray filled the room: it was a hive of activity, with private rooms to have your hair cut and set. Customers were offered a complimentary pack of cigarettes - you were supposed to take one to have under the dryer. As I was apprenticed to the company, I was to be seen and not heard. I had to wear a three-piece suit and stand to attention outside my boss’s cubicle. I shampooed, cleaned and was general dog’s body to the stylists.

I was earning 16 pounds a week and still living at home. Eventually the company expanded to a salon in what was called Hay Wrights (where Farmers now stands on Lambton Quay), run by a stylist with enormous talent and had a good business sense.

While he had secured a very good team of hairdressers, it was a dreadful place to work... it had no windows, no air conditioning and if the power went out we had to use candles to keep going. I worked alongside a stylist who did only long hair all day. Every 15 minutes, she would set one and comb one out. I would wash one, comb one, all day, every day. In between you would stand and hand up rollers or pins. The tedium was high. My boss and I clashed over a number of things, and he was always trying to cut my long hair off. We constantly had reviews and they were not always great.

Once again the salon expanded and opened another branch in Porirua. All the hairdressers dreaded the announcement on who would staff the new branch, but it was no surprise who got the short straw. My career path was not going the way I wished.

Despite the down-at-heel location, my new manager was lovely. I ventured onto the floor doing more hairdressing, and practiced in the weekends by working in a small suburban salon in my home town of Raumati South. It was mainly blue rinse and funny little sets - hardly the path to international fame and glory - but it got me into practice. Those days in Porirua became the start of a transformation into the young stylist I could be.

I made lots of mistakes but leant from them. My worst experience was with a cute young girl who had such beautiful long hair. Tasked with trimming and reducing weight, I picked up the wrong scissors, took one cut close to the roots and a whole section came off. She looked back in horror at a bristle standing up on her crown! As expected, she did not become a regular client nor did I get the date I had imagined. How embarrassing!  

First ventures on the Kapiti Coast...

After settling into my styling straps, the time had come for something more. I was over the Porirua salon. A business had become available in Waikanae and while I knew nothing of business, I was a competent cocky new hairdresser armed with plenty of motivation. My father assisted me in the purchase.  I had to get the owner to agree to stay on as I was still only an apprentice and could not employ staff. It was a funny little salon, not much bigger than most people’s double bedroom. It had just one basin, and a color bay behind a shower curtain. Waikanae was a sleepy little town, with a mix of locals and yuppies from the city. They were to become the extent of my business.

The salon prospered, my apprenticeship was complete, and we outgrew our basic premises. A new site was required, so we shifted next door a medical center. This proved to be a mistake... it still looked like a medical center, waiting room with bench seats, and though I was building a great reputation for my cutting the location put people off.

Eventually we had to move, so I bought out my opposition... a nice classic local salon, lace curtains and all. They were the first thing to go! My staff started to grow, and our profile was building all the time. I was becoming more ambitious, doing competition work in Wellington and competing round the country. These results inspired a great competitive friendship with my old boss from Wellington. I was getting results which also built my business, and soon enough we were expanding again.

Now married with two children and having purchased my first home, it was time for something really big. The next business in Waikanae was four times larger... it resembled that first big salon I had worked at in the city. The dryers were banked down one wall, with lots of gilded mirrors, there were five basins in the wet room, and five cutting bays.

But despite the big vision, you knew you were living in the country. The local women would even bring the evening meal down to prepare while having their hair done... podding the peas under the dryer, or even peeling the odd potato! 

London Ahoy!

I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to further my career, but this meant being a truly international quality hairdresser... something that was unlikely to happen on the sleepy Kapiti Coast. To achieve it, I needed to go to London.
So we rented out our Kapiti home, booked into Salsoon’s Acadamy, packed up and just went. Arriving in London was amazing... we shifted into a friend’s house, which was owned by Bryan Ferry, man of the moment. It was in Holland Park, a nice part of London.

I pushed myself to do as many courses as possible and Salsoon’s was the place to do it... a fabulous experience. My tutor was artistic director for 12 years, who went on to open his own salon and invited me to join as a stylist in one of London’s fashion ritzy areas.

This was to be the crossroad in my life. The leap had been made, but where was my future going? It was our intention to stay two years. However, London was expensive and bringing up two children was not easy. Moving to Liverpool where we had a family home seemed to be the sensible solution. There, we could hunker down and rescue our finances. We moved to the house, which had to be 100 years old and not lived in for 10 years.

Grass grew around the windows; inside you couldn’t see for cobwebs, and the beds had a straw mattress! In the winter icicles literally hung from the ceiling. Heating was by means of open fires in each room, but you never got warm. But crucially, we had no rent to pay... so despite the dire conditions, we stuck it out and stayed for just over 12 months.

My work was now with one of the biggest hair salons in the world. They had 250 or more salons just in the UK. While I was employed as artistic director, the role came with many managerial responsibilities. There was a load of trouble shooting and problem solving to be done around the region, mainly Liverpool’s Helens and Manchester.

I remember this as the first job which properly opened my eyes to how a business really works, particularly at scale. It’s an experience that still guides me in the day by day running of my business today.

Armed with a wealth of knowledge, it was time to leave the UK and return to NZ.  

A golden return to Wellington

I had many offers of employment, and was able to earn top dollar for my hard-won international experience. I eventually joined an old friend, and we went into business together as Robert/Nicholas.

It was a high profile salon that generated a huge following, and we were very competitive and hard working. We worked and played hard, and the business went on to be a success for 7 years. Sadly, the nature of partnerships is that they usually head in different directions. Ours was no exception, and after a good run we closed up. It was time to go back on my own.

I set up “Dangerous Acquaintance” around a core of loyal old staff, and an old friend whom I secured from the UK. I had managed to get residency for him so he was always doubly committed to the team!

It was the mid-80s: power suits and power styles. We had an up-to-the minute trendy pink and grey fit out. What was I thinking? Not long after opening came a troublesome time for me. With all success comes a price to pay, and we were living the high life. We had high levels of borrowing and the rising interest rates began to bite.

Troubled times in the 80s

Then came the stock market crash. My life was in tatters. My marriage was broken, I had to sell the beach house, I couldn’t afford the boat. The tax man was chasing me for unpaid taxes and my suppliers were cutting me off. Oh, how your life can change overnight.

The salon battled on through, avoiding receivership by the slimmest margin. It would trade out and survive. Drained by the experience, I sold out to my old friend and he took over the business. It was time to get my family together, so we started a new life in Taupo.

Naturally, I went back to hairdressing, but couldn’t cope with working for someone else... the backwater styles and basic salary were very demoralizing. I even worked as a barman to subsidize my income. My health was not good, and my past was still catching up with me.

Looking for new avenues, I redoubled my work efforts and took up a career in Real Estate. It was to be surprisingly a rewarding change. For a time, I absolutely forgot about hairdressing. Unsurprisingly, the basic principles of customer service (learnt from being a stylist) worked a treat. Although the crash made it difficult and the market remained depressed, somehow I made my mark as a successful salesperson.

I continued this for two years until one day, out of the blue, I was offered a site in the first K-Mart plaza in Wanganui. At the time it was a very attractive offer... and they wanted a high profile name. Still slightly unsure as to how the opportunity arose, it suddenly became a reality.

Unsurprisingly, the salon was not my cup of tea. I had overestimated the region... it was very backward. The pricing was way below my expectation, and look was just too much... the town was looking only for value, not the high end class salon I was offering. To save my sanity, there was really only one thing for it - return to the city and build my client base again.

The beginnings of Haight Ashbury

The second return to Wellington proved easier than expected. I was really only away for four years, so went back to join my friend at Dangerous Acquaintance, now a totally refurbished salon with a new look. In an amusing reversal of fortune, the owner went back to the UK, while I stepped up to manage his (previously my!) salon. Things were settling into place once more.

When the opportunity to open what is today Haight Ashbury arose, I wanted to do things differently. It was another partnership but we set it up and ran it like a co-operative. We were early adopters of a new model... our own mini-businesses under the one umbrella, sharing the rent and all costs including staff.

We decided from the outset that HA would be a real “destination” salon. It was a beautiful building with immaculate presentation, but had no particular street appearance. Because of our large client base we relied on word of mouth. We were open to other stylists who wanted to join our co-op, and eventually secured one other partner, reducing our costs and improving our profit levels. It was a successful formula. A key to the success of this structure was a special friend who ran the whole organization. Lynette (who currently still works at Haight Ashbury) was once a hairdresser and had all the knowledge of the industry. Her input was invaluable.

Some years later, the business progress encouraged us into purchasing a second salon. Located in the Dukes Arcade, Cuba Street (I had worked there for a previous business) it was then very big business, particularly for retail sales. Its foot traffic was huge.

However, this expansion proved to be our undoing. Having lost one of the directors in illness we sold off the original Haight Ashbury lease to a up and coming hairdressing business. They ended up defaulting on the rent, which put us in a terrible spot. We were on the guarantees. It was a trying time but after 2 years we were able to close the door on a huge learning experience, and were determined not to repeat the mistakes we had made.

I went out in search of a new site and a new start for Haight Ashbury Salons limited. With limited finance available a site was chosen in Johnston St. It was far too big... I needed barely half the space. Thankfully, the landlord was obliging and prepared to assist in the fit out. All I needed was a good architect who would translate my experience of a workable salon.

The task and expense was going to be huge, and a few people close to me thought I had lost the plot! I had four of the original staff who wanted to stay with me, but between them they had very little experience. I was the star act and the bread winner! While we looked consummately professional, we lacked a client base... there was nothing for it but to band together and support one another without compromise.

I persevered and encouraged the business to continue. As years went by the team added more and more professional hairdressers, and grew to around 16 including beauty. Finally we were able to employ a dedicated front of house person, a salon coordinator, who dramatically improved the whole running and vibe of the salon. The salon remains at this size today.

Haight Ashbury has seen many good people come and go, which is normal in this type of business, but some are still with me today.

I must say I have been privileged to have met some very talented people. Together, we’ve had longevity in the industry. Over 40 years, there are countless fond memories of wonderful times: competitions, demonstrations, shows, silly banter, and some wild parties!

We have had huge support from L'Oreal and a relationship which continues to grow.

Lastly, I am grateful to all the staff past and present. I am extremely thankful to all my clients some who have been with me a long time... for some, it's so long that I'm not allowed to say!

Best regards,

Rob