Scare brings down biz at beauty salons, barber shops

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, May 25

Indore Kumar (50), owner of Indore Hair Dresser, is sitting on a bench in his salon at Model Town and waiting anxiously for a customer for the past two-hours, but it seems an endless wait. He received only five customers during the day, while he used to attend to 35 to 40 customers daily before the enforcement of the lockdown.

The same situation prevails at almost all beauty salons and barber shops which have been affected the most during the Covid pandemic. After keeping their shops closed for around a month and a half, the beauty salons and barber shops have opened during Lockdown 3.0, but the Covid scare seems to be visible on their business. Customers are not turning up at their shops.

The owners of salons say due to the Covid scare, only around 10 per cent of the customers are coming to their shops for hair cut and shaving. They are worried about their livelihood as most of them have taken the shops on rent. the owners of these establishments say that they have to pay electricity charges and salary to staff members along with other daily expenses.

“Though the government has allowed us to open our shops, we are not getting business like before. I used to receive 30-35 customers daily before the lockdown, but now the number has reduced to five to six daily which is not sufficient to run our livelihood,” said Indore. “We care for our customers and we use gloves, masks and sanitisers, but it is the Covid scare that is not allowing the customers to come to our shops for haircut or shave,” he added.

Madan Lal (37), owner of Life of Asia hair dresser near Hospital Chowk in the city, has the same story to tell. He said, “Covid has hit our business very hard as people are hesitating to come to us, instead they are calling us to their residences for hair cut, which is time consuming and under such circumstances it is very difficult for us to run our livelihood.” He was worried about the timing of the shops and said that market timing was between 9 am and 6 pm, whereas people preferred to go to the barber shop early morning.

Sahil, the owner of a beauty salon, said he had staff of 10 members, and they came in the morning and returned after attending to hardly a couple of customers. “It is very difficult to bear the expenses like rent, salary of the staff and others,” he added. He maintained that more than 70 per cent people needed hair cut as they had not visited the barber shop during the lockdown.

Covid scare has hit the business hard and that can be made out from the fact that people have cut their hair at home and even shared the pictures on social media. “Due to the Covid scare, I did not go to the barber shop, but got my hair cut at home by my son,” said Jaspal, a resident of the city.

Amit Kumar, another resident, said he tonsured his son at home as he did not want to go to a salon due to the Covid scare. “Since we cannot maintain physical distance at a barber shop as the barber has to maintain close contact while cutting hair and shaving,” he added.

Some of the beauty saloon owners have started using safety gears like face shield, PPE kits, thermal scanner, sanitisers at their salons for the safety of customers. “We have provided PPE kits and face shield to our staff members to protect both the customers and the staff from Covid,” said Sunny, a beauty salon owner in Sector 13.