LOCKDOWN was a low point in the 45 year journey of celebrity Glasgow hair salon Taylor Ferguson, which has cut the hair of stars from Lulu to Nigella Lawson.
But owners Taylor and Anne Ferguson got through it, as they had with past crises.
“There’s only one low point and it’ll be with me forever,” Anne Ferguson told the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey.
“It was the 23rd of March 2020, when the First Minister came on TV and said: All hairdressers close now. And I remember thinking, really? My appointment book is full this afternoon. You must be having a laugh.”
Taylor added: “The other side is that when you get things thrown at you, you just get on with it. Remember the miners’ strike? The three-day week? What can we do without power for three days? We were actually cutting hair at the window, in the daylight.”
Entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter asked: “Business was in your family, so was it natural for you to go into business?”
Taylor recalled working in his both his father’s bakery business and his mother’s hairdressing business while still at school.
“I can remember carrying the board on my head with the rolls and pies, and delivering rolls,” he said. “And I was shampooing. I used to have a whole pocket full of money. I don’t have any now, by the way!”
Businessman Lord Willie Haughey asked how long it took to get the business established.
“It was about five years,” Anne Ferguson replied. “Then we got introduced to a public relations person who really sort of put our name out there. And we started working with model agencies and doing fashion shows. And from there, it really just started to happen. It was just hard work. We knew that we were reasonably good at what we did. People from London picked us up, and then there were shows; invitations to go to New York, to Hong Kong, Thailand. It just took us a further step than we probably ever thought we would do.”
Anne said she would love to cut the Queen’s hair.
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