I think a few years ago I talked about how a few "100 dollar haircut" places where opening up around Taipei. It seemed an interesting idea, but i couldn't see any way that they could continue to exist after a few months, given how little money that is (about 3 US dollars).
I remember the first one I saw was in my neighborhood and it was very tiny and trying to keep the price down as much as possible, but they were pretty popular. I guess they were successful because another one opened up a few doors down and was a bit bigger and glitzier. Soon after that it seemed like every mega-mart had one of these on their premises. Still I was waiting for these to go bust.
Instead of collapsing, these places are striving. Not only are they all around the city, but they have forced most normal barbershops and even some salons to lower their prices. Of course you are still going to have your high class places, but many salons have also gone down to the three dollar hair cut range for their base service.
It's great to see what happens when we vote with our dollars. But I also worried this would mean that a lot of salon workers and barbers would be out of a job, however the haircut business seems to be growing because of these stores. One part of it seems to be that many of the people who go there seem to be going just to get a touch up. If a hair cut cost a lot, people would only go once every few months, but now that it's so cheap some seem to go every week. I've seen some people go in to get a haircut just to kill time. I'm guessing business is good, but look for my report in a few more years to see if over-saturation killed their market.
The picture here is of a new one near my house. The barber was actually very good. That's the big benefit of all this is now there are talented barbers doing this. Before you could get a three buck hair cut but you did walk out like you had a three buck hair cut. Now though for your three bucks you come out looking like a million bucks.
