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Continue ShoppingThe Final Chapter of Beardsgaard
When you open a small business, you hear over and over again how 80% of them end in their first year. Of those who make it, 50% won't make it to year 5. Only about 30% of them make it to 10.
This dream that sprouted in Batavia and has been watered by the community and everyone that has ever worked here has grown two small businesses that beat the odds in so many ways.
Because a nerdy, beard-centric barbershop allll the way out here where the cornfields start? Too niche, we were told. Would never work. But we knew, the nerds were here. They're everywhere. The dudes wanting to look like the best versions of themselves, bearded or clean shaven were here too. They're everywhere.
Bertus the Bloody Butcher of Schorem and Reuzel once told us: "Build a place you love to be. Everything else will come from that." Turns out that's all there is to it. And then you just have to not fuck it up.
We have always said that opening a business is like throwing yourself off a cliff and figuring out how to build the plane on the way down or whatever metaphor we pick out of the hat that day, and somehow, we did.
Not only did we build it, we built something that may now be one of the last barbershops of its kind: a fully employed shop with really good health insurance, 401(k)s, paid time off, most of our employees were buying their first homes, and, for a while, we even achieved the mythical four-day workweek.
We didn’t just achieve our dreams. We blew so far past them, we never could have dreamed of half of what’s come to pass in these walls and because of this place, this town, the people that made it so.
But the world in which we built that dream of Beardsgaard has changed.
It wasn't one thing. It was dozens of things, arriving gradually and then seemingly all at once. The world changed. The economics changed. The barbering industry changed. What our bodies need from us to stay functional changed. The financial and time costs of operating this kind of business changed. And somewhere in those same years, we changed too.
We are incredibly proud of what those younger versions of ourselves were capable of building. The years since the pandemic asked more of us than we knew how to give without giving away pieces of ourselves along with it. We kept going. Then we kept going some more. There was a bit of damage to the machinery, but it still works, if we take good care of it.
We could make all sorts of structural changes to keep operating a barbershop in this particular space, because it is feasible. But at some point, it wouldn't be Beardsgaard anymore.
Somewhere along the way, we also had to admit that the two people flying this thing aren't the same people who threw themselves off that cliff twelve years ago.
Beardsgaard isn't ending because the dream didn't work. It's ending because it did.
This is the right place to close this book and begin not just a new chapter, but a new volume.
There are new stories to tell.
This place started with two barbers in their early 30s and their 6-year-old, with a business plan that projected operating with 4 total employees, including us, by year 5. Instead, we had a 14-employee business before we even got to year 5. Now we’re in our early 40s with an 18-year-old graduate.
If you have seen that photo above our front door from 2013, when Beardsgaard was just an idea and a dream, you might not know the story behind it.
Natalie and Tyler love Doctor Who, we both even have Doctor Who tattoos, and a quote has always stuck with us:
“We all change, when you think about it, we're all different people; all through our lives, and that's okay, that's good, you've gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.”
Our 30-year-old selves put that photo there because we knew there would be hard times in making this dream happen, and there were. But when they came we could look above the door and remember the dreams of those crazy kids we used to be, the versions of us who built this place.
But back to that Doctor Who quote, the last bit: “I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.”
And we will always remember when our home away from home was yours too. Thank you for every single day of this, Gaardians of the Realm, in so many parts of building Beardsgaard with us.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
As each barber of Beardsgaard announces their next steps, we will update their About Pages with where you can find them in 2027 post-Beardsgaard.
We will be taking appointments up until our final opening day, Wednesday, December 30th. The next day, New Year's Eve, we will be hosting an open house from noon til 4, where so much of the furniture and decor will need to begin to find new homes.
With 12 years of gear, memorabilia and memories in here, we will certainly not be able to clear out this huge space by the end of the year. In January we will be moving all the things we need to and continuing to sell all the things we can’t take with us on the next leg of our adventure before we lock the doors for the last time at the end of January.
We hope this space will be filled by another barbershop or salon, as it has a beautiful custom-build 5-chair station wall built in. Mayhaps another family with a little who gets to grow up here, listening to the music dance along the century-old tin ceiling and developing fabulous social skills.
As for the Beardsgaards/Andersons ourselves, we said when we started this place that we wanted this shop to feel like coming over to your friend’s nerd cave and getting a haircut. We’re getting back to our roots while we tousle yours.
This story may as well be called There and Back Again.
