By: Tom Hunter, Jack Cosgrave, Mason Casavecchia
Amongst the many barbers located around the South Shore, there is no question that Judi’s Barber Shop in Weymouth is one of the best in the business. Primarily offering men’s haircuts, in addition to having one barber that also specializes in women’s hair styling, Judi’s Barber Shop has been serving locals of the South Shore with outstanding haircuts and customer service for quite some time as of now. In an interview with the owner, Judi Quatrale, I learned that she began operations on June 3rd of 1997, and her skilled staff as well as her loyal clientele have allowed her business to thrive for over twenty-five years. Additionally, Judi’s Barber Shop has been featured twice on The South Shore Living Magazine as the best barber shop of the South Shore, which is an incredibly difficult accolade to receive in light of how many barber shops there are on the South Shore.
Judi, a Massachusetts native of Framingham and Mattapoisett, explained that she really wanted to keep her business local in Massachusetts once she established herself as a barber. After asking Judi to discuss the reasons behind her decision to enter the barber business, she explained that her aunt introduced her to the trade, and eventually convinced her to attend barber school after graduating from high school. Shortly after graduating from barber school in just under a year, which requires one-thousand hours of experience, Judi found a job at a barber shop in the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA. Fast forward to 1997, having gained ample experience as a barber, Judi finally opened her shop in Weymouth, and quickly gained many customers who frequently visited the shop for haircuts.
To get a sense of the nature of the barber industry, I asked Judi to delve into some of the challenges and difficult elements of owning and operating a barbershop in 2023. Her immediate response was that the COVID-19 outbreak was, without a doubt, her most challenging obstacle to overcome, as she was forced to close the shop for over two months in 2020. During this time period, she explained that there was substantial uncertainty as to what the future looked like for the business, considering that she was still paying rent for a prime location at a busy intersection on the corner of Pleasant Street and Washington Street. However, the Town of Weymouth eventually extended COVID relief assistance to small businesses around the town, essentially reducing her overhead costs throughout the shutdown.
After learning of the challenges that Judi experienced throughout the global shutdown, I became curious about some of the more recent challenges, and she explained that competition is continuing to grow as barbering continues to prove to be a successful trade. In turn, I asked Judi about what finding new customers looks like in light of the abundance of competition in the industry. Her explanation was intriguing, as she described that the marketing aspects of barbering are so different from other businesses. She explained that once people find a barber that they trust and enjoy visiting, that it is highly unlikely that they are willing to visit a different barber shop who is not familiar with their desired hair style. Because of this, Judi said that customer retention is a top priority, and she aims to provide customers with great experiences by hiring staff that are not only skilled in barbering, but are also extremely friendly and welcoming to those customers that are visiting for their first time. By putting such a strong emphasis on excellent customer service, Judi explained that customers recommend the shop to friends and family through word of mouth.
Lastly, I talked to Judi about the role that the internet and technology play in growing the business, and she explained that the internet is not as helpful in the barber business as it would seem, since people do not tend go out of their way to visit as many barber shops as they can like people do with restaurants and food. Because of this, Judi uses Facebook as her core platform of digital marketing, since Facebook usually garners the attention of the locals through pictures of haircuts and customer testimonials.
Essentially, Judi’s Barber Shop is an exceptional option to consider to one looking into finding a new barber, with an array of highly experienced, well-established barbers that carefully and precisely personalize each and every haircut to their customers, providing a tailored experience that leaves first time visitors coming back for years.
You can visit Judi’s Barber Shop at 1216 Washington Street in Weymouth, MA. You can contact them via:
Phone: 781-331-5834