Spotlight: In Laconia, barber Bree Henderson has found “family”

LACONIA — Bree Henderson explains her path to Laconia in one word: serendipity.

Henderson is a native Ohioan who came to New Hampshire via Arizona. She moved to the Granite State after completing her service in the Air Force. She was married at the time, and her husband wanted to move to the Seacoast to be nearer to his children.

So there she was, living in a place where she hardly knew a soul and with a G.I. Bill “burning a hole in my pocket,” when she heard an ad on the radio for a barbering school.

“My first thought was, hmm, what would my barbershop look like?” So she signed up. “Turned out, I had a knack for it.”

Barbering is a small world, she soon learned. At the time, there were fewer than 1,000 barbers working in New Hampshire, and she heard that there was a need in the central part of the state.

“I heard Laconia needed a good barbershop,” she said, and she found a barber on Main Street that was willing to sell his business.

The first time she visited the city was when she drove up to discuss buying the shop. It was about 6 p.m., she said, and the downtown was “dead,” which didn’t bother her one bit.

“There was parking, there was a barber pole, that was all I needed.”

That proved to be an astute assessment. Henderson opened Polished and Proper Barber Shop and Shave Parlor in January of 2013, when she was 23, and has grown her business into the busiest barber shop in the city.

Just this month, she moved her business about a block up Main Street into a larger space. The new shop has room for five barbers and chairs – she could only fit three in her first shop. She plans to have four barbers working on most days, with all five in the shop on Fridays and Saturdays.

“I stick to very basic business principles,” Henderson said, when asked to explain her business’s success. “I firmly believe the mantra that every customer wants three things. They want it fast, they want it cheap, and they want it quality. You can only give them two of those things. And a business has to be consistent – consistent hours, consistent quality, consistent service.”

She has found it challenging to recruit new barbers to join her growing business. The biggest roadblock is often housing – there isn’t much attractive rental housing at a price that young professionals could afford. But she’s glad, nevertheless, that she decided to locate her business where she did.

Coming to Laconia, she said, “worked out really well for me… It’s phenomenal to me because I found a home. There is no family in New England for me, so I made one downtown.”

When she pitches the job to prospective employees, she uses the region’s natural beauty and recreational opportunities in her pitch. “There’s endless things to do without having to spend money,” she said. Her favorite pastimes include hiking, walking on the WOW Trail and kayaking from the Winnipesaukee River into Lake Winnisquam.

By living in Laconia, she said, a young professional can choose from a variety of adventures that are also budget-friendly.

“Having the massive amount of activities we have in the Lakes Region is a huge draw,” she said. And once they live here for a while, they will be drawn into the community. Henderson serves on an advisory board for the city, and nearly won a seat on the City Council.

“The best thing about Laconia is that even though it is a city, it is a small city. It has those great small-town qualities. The more you get to know people, the more they get to be like family.”