00:00My name is Richard Marshall, and I'm the founder and CEO of Pall Mall Barbers.
00:06Pall Mall Barbers is a premium men's grooming brand.
00:09You know, we do barber services, we do men's grooming products,
00:12and we're based across central London and in New York City.
00:16And this year we celebrate 130 years of the original store being at 27 Wickham Street in London.
00:26So originally, when I brought the business 20 years ago, in 2005, I brought the business.
00:32I knew it was quite old, but I didn't know it had a history.
00:35And when I was doing DIY, like doing up the store,
00:38I found an old business card down the back of the floorboards.
00:41And basically what happened was that it was originally called the Pall Mall Toilets Loop,
00:46and it was dated, it said it was established over 50 years, and this card was very old.
00:51So I'd done some research by the request of one of my mentors at the time,
00:56and then basically went to the reference library just in Leicester Square,
00:59and I went to the postal records, and with a bit of help from the librarians,
01:04I found, I dated back the store to 1896.
01:08So basically I just brought one of the oldest barbershops in the world.
01:12If you have a look at the palmallbarbers.com website,
01:15you will see some old photos of the old barbershop store.
01:19And I got sent some photos from around 1910, 1914,
01:25from a lady in Australia who found them in an attic.
01:29And we'd put on a website about the Pall Mall Toilet Saloon,
01:32and she found us and sent us some images,
01:35which I'd been looking for for years, and I'd actually given up looking,
01:38because we couldn't find any.
01:39And then we've got these photos of the barbers outside the barber store
01:44with the big moustaches in the white gowns and so on.
01:47And obviously I say I'm the founder of Pall Mall Barbers, right?
01:49But originally it was called the Pall Mall Toilet Saloon.
01:52All I'd done was modernised it.
01:54I changed the name, because toilet had a different meaning.
01:56You know, now if I said toilet, people are going to have,
01:59it's going to conjure up a number of different things rather than the barber store.
02:03How to be a barber in safe and easy lessons.
02:06Barbershops come from London.
02:07Originally, the barber surgeons were, barbers used to be, do dentistry,
02:13and they used to do surgery in the barber's chair.
02:17You think of Sweeney Todd.
02:18You think of the Pie Man.
02:19You think of the barbershop quartets.
02:21You think of all these things.
02:23They were all based in London.
02:26You're going to be famous.
02:29That's how we send our customers away.
02:33To be honest with you, I struggled with spelling my name and filling out forms,
02:38you know, for much of my life.
02:40Until I was actually around my 40s, where it started to improve a little bit,
02:45but I was still very struggling with dyslexia.
02:48It was a very big part of me.
02:49I started, I went into, my sister used to work in a barber store back in my hometown.
02:55And basically what happened is I went in one Saturday to see her, to say hello,
02:59and the boss asked me if I would like to be a Saturday boy.
03:03So I started to, you know, I said yes.
03:05I asked my parents, you know, as you imagine when I was 12, very young.
03:09And then basically what happened was I started sweeping the floors and making the tea
03:13and watching the barbers work.
03:14And I just fell in love with it.
03:16And I wasn't good at school.
03:18And I got expelled at 15 and with no grades or whatever.
03:24And it was a real challenge.
03:26But when I got into barbering, there was something about the community.
03:29It was something about the interaction with other people.
03:33I was quite good at that.
03:34Barbering gave me a lifeline because when you don't read and write,
03:38and like I say, people don't realize what that means.
03:41So you imagine you can't read a letter what people send you.
03:44You can't fill out a form.
03:45You go to the gym and they say, put your address in and you struggle to do that.
03:48There's a lot of things that happen.
03:50And most jobs require them basic skills.
03:53And when you don't have them, it's very difficult.
03:55So I just avoided it and done something, learned something, which I didn't need them skills.
04:00And that was the thing.
04:02And what barbering gave me was direction.
04:04It gave me an opportunity to grow.
04:07And I've become good with people.
04:09And I love making people look great.
04:13I love hearing their stories.
04:14I love talking to them.
04:15And a lot of my best conversations I ever had were in my barber's chair.
04:19So in November, I got a letter from the cabinet office.
04:22And it was, it looked quite important.
04:25And I was away in Spain at the time.
04:27And I got back and I got open this letter.
04:30And I'd been put forward from the prime minister to the king to, for an honor of an MBE, a
04:36member of the British Empire.
04:39And when I read it, I didn't know what to do.
04:42I didn't know whether to cry, to shout, to be angry, to be sad.
04:45I didn't have a clue.
04:46It was kind of one of these surreal moments in life.
04:49And, you know, and I look at it and I think, yeah, okay, that's really interesting.
04:54And it was from a work that I'd done around international trade, around mentoring people in international trade and raising
05:02the profile of people with dyslexia throughout the government and throughout the media and stuff.
05:06And that was one of my missions.
05:08It wasn't about being commercially successful.
05:12It was about things what I'd done for other people.
05:14And that was really what I set out to do is to really give back.
05:17And so when you get that kind of honor in that way and you're recognized in that way for the
05:24work, what you do for the larger community, it was very special.
05:37Back in 2019, we, we, we done an event in our Palmar Barbers Paddington and it was on Valentine's Day,
05:45actually.
05:45And it was Prince William and Heads Together and Kensington Palace.
05:48And we done an event which was Prince William come and we had a charity and we had different barbers
05:56from, from other businesses as well, come to our store as well as our own barbers and celebrate awareness of
06:04men's mental health.
06:05And one of the things which, um, you know, and, and suicide as well, cause men don't talk about their
06:10mental health generally, you know, some do, but a lot don't.
06:14And, um, and really to start opening up and talking about that, we wanted to celebrate that and create safe
06:20environments for people to talk, right?
06:22Just get, put words to their emotions.
06:25And so we had this event and one of the things which I found, which actually inspired me to, to
06:31really open up to start talking, you know, um, without any limits, right?
06:36Just being open, um, was Prince William sat in one of our barber chairs and he was talking about some
06:43of the stuff what he would have to experience growing up.
06:46And from his side without going into the details, but he talked about certain things where he struggled, as you
06:52could imagine, you could probably work out what they were and, um, and, and basically opened up in front of
06:58the store, shop full of barbers, cameras, media, and everything else.
07:03And for me, that inspired me because I felt if he could do that, so could I.
07:08What role does the, the barber chair play in that for a lot of years?
07:13Oh, I tell you, I'll talk from my own experience as a barber.
07:16Um, I cut hair, I've been in the industry like four decades, right?
07:20And when I started out, I had clients for many, many years and we went on a total journey together.
07:26And what is said in a barber chair stays in a barber chair.
07:30And, and we went through life with the clients.
07:33We went through, you know, marriages.
07:35We went through first dates.
07:36We went through engagements.
07:37We went through divorces.
07:39We went through like kids.
07:41We went through deaths.
07:43We went through all of this type of stuff.
07:45All the major things will happen in a life.
07:47You share with your barber.
07:49And, and that was one of the highlights.
07:50And I've still got people I know, especially on LinkedIn and so on.
07:54And we talk about when, 20 years ago when they were sitting in my barber's chair and I was talking
07:59about my vision of what I wanted to do and so on.
08:01And, and they say to me, Rich, I remember you telling me you were going to do this.
08:05And, and that's the power of this stuff.
08:07And then relationships are very secret.
08:10And I think between a barber and, and their client or client and barber, it's a very important relationship.
08:18How old?
08:19130.
08:20You don't have a good day over 40.
08:21Oh yeah.
08:21Well, it's a moisturizer what I've got, you know.
08:23And you mentioned about big bushy mustaches and those old photos.
08:26You still, still get a lot of them or is that left in the, in the 1890s?
08:30Yeah.
08:31No, well, you do have a lot, like your mustache, right?
08:33A lot, a lot of people have mustaches.
08:35I was going to say this is a prime 19th century, but thank you.
08:37You know, it could be, it could be a bit of Mo Wax and you're awake.
