SAFE SPACE The colourful facade of Barbierro Biñan is difficult to overlook even on a busy avenue. —Photographs courtesy of Barbierro Barbershop
With its facade of hanging colours that includes a buff, bearded, and tattooed siren holding a pair of scissors, Barbierro, a barbershop in Biñan, Laguna, is definitely noticeable on the facet of a skimpy but busy street resulting in a serious expressway. Its uncommon aesthetics aren’t the one factor that makes Barbierro an business standout; its complete enterprise idea makes it a pioneer within the business, 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 concept, nonetheless, had lengthy been brewing in Sumayao’s thoughts due to his and Directo’s previous experiences with the standard macho-type barbershops. Actually, Directo all the time had his grooming finished at residence simply to keep away from the unlucky male toxicity of a few of these institutions.
“He all the time felt threatened within the common barbershops as a result of he’s queer. He wears a mohawk, has lots of earrings—flamboyant,” says Sumayao, who can also be the director for membership and regional relations of the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce (PLCC). “And it was the identical method for me; once I ask for a special coiffure, if I transfer in a different way, 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 area for everybody.”
EXPANDING Barbierro Laong Laan marks the second department of the pioneering queer barbershop model.
The concept 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 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 residing in Biñan for round 5 years already, and having grown up in Pili, Camarines Sur, he says Biñan “made sense” for him to name residence, too—Outdated World attraction, small streets, the occasional flooding.
QUEER VALUES Franchise signing for Barbierro Laong Laan.
“Biñan can also be an excellent mannequin for companies in all places,” he provides. “From the submitting of our utility to securing the correct paperwork, it was a fairly easy expertise.”
To make sure that Barbierro fulfilled their imaginative and prescient of being a secure area, Sumayao says that’s what they first centered on: the bodily interiors. They veered away from the standard industrial or gents’s membership look, and as an alternative crammed the store with vibrant colours, with the partitions adorned with queer art work. The TV isn’t all the time caught on a basketball channel, both.
Nicely-lit, well-ventilated, cool and spacious, Sumayao and Directo quickly noticed the store attracting households as properly, notably mothers and wives who admire the snug and secure ready space as their sons and husbands get their common haircut. (This author, who sported an undercut on the top of the pandemic, and prefers to now keep a pixie minimize, has turn into a Barbierro common as properly.)
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 % are nonetheless the standard clientele,” Sumayao says. “My favourite prospects are the lesbians, since often, when their girlfriends go to the standard barbershops, the opposite one prefers to attend outdoors as a result of they don’t seem to be snug inside. We get a lot of the high-ticket prospects among the many seniors, since they like the chief care we offer, just like the therapeutic massage, and so on.”
Based mostly on buyer suggestions, Sumayao says Biñan has to this point been receptive of getting the Philippines’ first queer barbershop opening on the town. For Sumayao and Directo, they’re completely happy to have an opportunity to amplify the dialog on the affect of LGBTQ+ companies on the nation’s economics. By means 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 return from the queer neighborhood,” Sumayao says. “And it’s vital to me that they espouse the queer values of the model, as properly 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 business. Whereas they haven’t had any destructive experiences with their workers, Sumayao says that in their SOGIE or Sexual Orientation, Gender Id, and Gender Expression briefings, what actually shocked the barbers was the breadth of the gender spectrum.
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“Plenty of them weren’t conscious of the nongender-conforming teams. In fact, what they had been accustomed to had 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 an entire vary of points. The truth that Jedi and I are right here calling one another ‘babe’, that now we have our photograph up on the wall, and that our homosexual mates come over and we discuss lots of issues aside from intercourse—that normalizes it for them,” Sumayao says. —Contributed
