looking for business advise please..... (promotional, employment, buy)

[saas_1gatorfan]

This is going to be a long post so I appreciate you taking time to read it. We are in need of some advice or direction. To start, my wife has been cutting hair for about 14 or so years and is a very good barber. Yes there are women barbers. She has been cutting hair where she started her new shop for almost 7 years. Over the past 7 years she has built up a very large clientele. I would say at least 4 or 5 hundred people. The shop she worked in normally ran 4 5 or so chairs, normally keeping 4 busy all the time. Most of the time if and when her coworkers were sitting she was cutting with 3 or 4 waiting for a cut in excess of an hours wait. She is that good.
Not to bore you with the details, but the owner of the barbershop and my wife had a disagreement and my wife decided to quit after seven years of employment there. It was just time to go. The new shop is on the other side of town yet, in the same town. She told my wife that it was her town and she wouldn’t work in this town because she knew every barber in town and she was going to call them and make sure they didn’t hire her so what was she to do? I said, forget about her, we will open you up your own shop and that’s what she did. The shop is very, very nice and upscale. She offers shaves, hot towels and all the other treats you wouldn’t expect to get in your run of the mill shop. She has retained about 40% of her customers. More and more are coming every day. Word of mouth has really worked well. We have spent thousands of dollars in advertising in the local papers, penny savers, flyers, brochures, business cards etc so we are definitely being proactive and trying to seek out her old customers. Here’s the dilemma we are facing.
Her old boss and her so called, old friends all have suffered amnesia and now have no idea where she has gone. They just say they don’t know or the make things up. Talking about bad business huh? The old boss has said every hateful thing from my wife has a metal illness to she is charging 16 dollars a haircut which neither are true. My wife has already taken a lot of business from this lady. I never wish misfortune on anyone but I want this to succeed as we have put everything we have into this business and we want it to work.
What were looking for are some creative ways to get men in the door. We want to pull people out of her old shop where the old hateful boss is. Again, not to be spiteful but there are a lot of her customers misplaced out there that don’t know where she’s gone. Once new customers get their haircut from my wife or her employee, whom got fired because he was accused of backing us financially which wasn’t the case. The lady just fired him. Pretty much guilty by association I guess. Their hooked. There has got to be a way that when people turn around and walk out of the shop when they don’t see their barber that we can help answer the question, where’s my barber? Unfortunately they are the property managers so I can’t park a truck with a banner or anything like that as they would have it towed. We have gone to all kinds of community events, joined the chamber, chased people down in the parking lot, ran ads for half price haircuts. We just need a hook. We even considered giving away free haircuts which we reconsidered on because we didn’t want to get riffraff in there. My wife is young and attractive and sometimes works alone. You see where I am going there. We are looking for some feedback as to what you like, dislike about getting your hair cut, what would you do if your old boss was spreading nasty rumors about you when your customers ask where you are? Where would you recommend we advertise as not all customers read publications, papers etc. We tried the radio and are in the process of getting vinyl put on the back of the car with the shop info. We leave the lights on at night so that the passerby’s can see in. Our shop has only been open for a short time but we are looking for short term growth in a expediential way. Thank you again for taking time to read this post.

[Paula Lynn]

It would be easier to read your post if you used paragraphs - it's difficult to read and follow your story.

[DMenscha]

I don't think you're ever going to be better off than if you take the high road. Most people are smart enough to not buy in to the sleazy innuendo and those that do, you don't need.

I sounds to me like you're on the right path with all your promotional ideas, but you probably need to accept the fact that you're not going to be able to start a new business and go gangbusters from the first day.

I'd give your loyal customers who followed your wife a discount for every new customer they refer to you or a "frequent flier" card to all of your customers giving them a every 10th cut free or something like that.

Also if you can remember the names of your previous customers, whitepages.com has a nice reverse lookup that might allow you to send postcards to them with an introductory deal of some kind.

Good luck and stick to the high road