SAFE SPACE The colourful facade of Barbierro Biñan is tough to overlook even on a busy road. —Images courtesy of Barbierro Barbershop
With its facade of placing colours that includes a buff, bearded, and tattooed siren holding a pair of scissors, Barbierro, a barbershop in Biñan, Laguna, is well noticeable on the aspect of a skimpy but busy highway resulting in a significant expressway. Its uncommon aesthetics aren’t the one factor that makes Barbierro an trade standout; its complete enterprise idea makes it a pioneer within the trade, too—because the Philippines’ first loud and proud queer barbershop.
Run by companions Paul Sumayao and Jedi Directo, Barbierro opened a few years in the past alongside San Francisco Street. The thought, nonetheless, had lengthy been brewing in Sumayao’s thoughts due to his and Directo’s previous experiences with the standard macho-type barbershops. In actual fact, Directo at all times had his grooming completed at dwelling simply to keep away from the unlucky male toxicity of a few of these institutions.
“He at all times felt threatened within the ordinary barbershops as a result of he’s queer. He wears a mohawk, has a number of earrings—flamboyant,” says Sumayao, who can be the director for membership and regional relations of the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce (PLCC). “And it was the identical manner for me; after I ask for a unique coiffure, if I transfer otherwise, or if I don’t react to discussions of sabong (cockfighting) or basketball, why do I really feel uncomfortable in a barbershop? And that’s how [the idea] got here to be: I wished a barbershop that’s a secure house for everybody.”
EXPANDING Barbierro Laong Laan marks the second department of the pioneering queer barbershop model.
The thought aptly got here at a time when Sumayao was nonetheless in graduate faculty pursuing increased research in entrepreneurship at Jose Rizal College, whereas working in advertising and marketing for Havaianas. His first foray into full-time entrepreneurship, nonetheless, occurred in 2021 with the institution of his and Directo’s creatives company, Studio Hibang (which they really run from inside a small workplace in Barbierro).
“We branded it as an LGBTQ+ creatives company as a result of we really feel that the [community’s] contribution to the financial system is being very a lot undermined,” Sumayao says. “Just like the PLCC, which I had already heard about years in the past, that’s what I envisioned: to have extra queer-owned companies within the Philippines.”
From there, opening Barbierro was the pure subsequent step for the couple. By then, Sumayao had been dwelling in Biñan for round 5 years already, and having grown up in Pili, Camarines Sur, he says Biñan “made sense” for him to name dwelling, too—Previous World attraction, small streets, the occasional flooding.
QUEER VALUES Franchise signing for Barbierro Laong Laan.
“Biñan can be a very good mannequin for companies all over the place,” he provides. “From the submitting of our software to securing the suitable paperwork, it was a reasonably easy expertise.”
To make sure that Barbierro fulfilled their imaginative and prescient of being a secure house, Sumayao says that’s what they first targeted on: the bodily interiors. They veered away from the standard industrial or gents’s membership look, and as a substitute stuffed the store with vibrant colours, with the partitions adorned with queer art work. The TV isn’t at all times caught on a basketball channel, both.
Nicely-lit, well-ventilated, cool and spacious, Sumayao and Directo quickly noticed the store attracting households as effectively, notably mothers and wives who recognize the comfy and secure ready space as their sons and husbands get their common haircut. (This author, who sported an undercut on the peak of the pandemic, and prefers to now preserve a pixie minimize, has grow to be a Barbierro common as effectively.)
Paul Sumayao (left) and Jedi Directo, Barbierro founders and companions.
Not only for LGBTQ
“Round 4 out of 10 prospects are the mothers with youngsters, after which 35 to 40 p.c are nonetheless the same old clientele,” Sumayao says. “My favourite prospects are the lesbians, since normally, when their girlfriends go to the same old barbershops, the opposite one prefers to attend exterior as a result of they don’t seem to be comfy inside. We get many of the high-ticket prospects among the many seniors, since they like the chief care we offer, just like the therapeutic massage, and so forth.”
Based mostly on buyer suggestions, Sumayao says Biñan has up to now been receptive of getting the Philippines’ first queer barbershop opening on the town. For Sumayao and Directo, they’re comfortable to have an opportunity to amplify the dialog on the influence of LGBTQ+ companies on the nation’s economics. By way of its franchise enterprise mannequin, Barbierro already has a second department alongside Laong Laan, Manila; they’re additionally seeking to develop to Quezon Metropolis and Bicol.
Barber Joshua
“I would like the enterprise house owners who will apply to come back from the queer neighborhood,” Sumayao says. “And it’s necessary to me that they espouse the queer values of the model, as effectively the values that I additionally uphold amongst all our workers: integrity, honesty and transparency.”
Their barbers, says Sumayao, have additionally been instrumental allies in altering the barbershop trade. Whereas they haven’t had any detrimental experiences with their workers, Sumayao says that in their SOGIE or Sexual Orientation, Gender Identification, and Gender Expression briefings, what actually shocked the barbers was the breadth of the gender spectrum.
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“Lots of them weren’t conscious of the nongender-conforming teams. After all, what they have been accustomed to have been the classifications of homosexual, lesbian and transwoman. That’s why I’m easing them into it. We watch ‘Drag Race’ right here, and it helps that they hear the members within the present discuss a complete vary of points. The truth that Jedi and I are right here calling one another ‘babe’, that we’ve got our picture up on the wall, and that our homosexual pals come over and we discuss a number of issues apart from intercourse—that normalizes it for them,” Sumayao says. —Contributed
