Entrepreneur Undaunted by Pitfalls of a Hairy Business

The blinds to the shop are drawn. The sign advertising “Shear Paradise” still is in place above the front door, but it is a paradise now lost. Inside, eight empty hairdressers’ chairs, three shampoo sinks and the barren walls serve as reminders that commerce used to be conducted here. It isn’t hard to picture better, more thriving days when you could have heard the animated talk of the hair salon, pictured the works in progress.

Yes, this empty shop in the strip mall at Atlanta Avenue and Magnolia Street in Huntington Beach looks all too common these days on the Orange County landscape.

Another sign of failure, another business gone. More jobs lost. More revenue lost. Darkness where once there was light.

That’s why we need people like Rick Broccolo.

Undaunted by the economy, he’s convinced he can breathe life into this corpse. And because he’s sure of that, you suddenly see the the bare walls and empty workstations not as the end of something but as the start.

That’s what Broccolo, 48, is doing on this Monday afternoon, trying to get the shop ready to reopen by Friday. It’s not a life-or-death deadline, but he needs to start generating revenue as the rent comes due. And so he’s taking applications, waiting for supplies, putting in the final touches--all the little things, he says, “that rack your brain.”

And, perhaps not insignificantly, doing it all with the self-confidence of an entrepreneur willing to take a chance in a troubled economy on a place in the same location that just folded.

“I don’t think negatively,” he says. “I try to be a positive thinker and look on the good side of things. It’s going to go, there’s no question about that. The only thing is, I may not get rich on it, but it’ll pay the bills.”

After getting out of the hair business two years ago, Broccolo swore he’d never re-enter it. But when he returned to Huntington Beach and had trouble restarting a real estate career he once had in town, he began looking for business locations.

Broccolo knows his predecessor’s operation fizzled but says his shop is geared to a different clientele. It will offer relatively inexpensive haircuts and should attract the family market that abounds in this section of Huntington Beach, he says.

“I think it’s a fairly safe bet. I never thought about the risk. I know there’s some, but from my past experience (with similar successful shops in Ventura County) and checking where my competition would be, I feel confident.”

That is not to say there aren’t anxious moments. “I have two things that happen. Either I go to bed early and wake up in the middle of the night, and I’m awake for a couple hours. Or, I go to bed at night and can’t go to sleep till 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning when I’m really dead. I’m thinking of all the details. Am I missing anything? Did I do everything? Do I have enough people? Do I have enough products? Putting all the pieces together, you’d be surprised how you lay in bed and think of all these things.”

The U.S. Small Business Administration says more than half of all new businesses fail within five years. Fully one-third go under within a year.

“I don’t think people understand what they’re getting into,” Broccolo says. “You get a business, you better be able to carry it for a while. A lot of people get in, they put everything they’ve got into it and then, if they can’t make it the first three months, they’re dead in the water.”

Starting in earnest around Jan. 1, Broccolo wanted to open by Feb. 1. “It’s a challenge, and that’s the real key. You could take two months to open up, but that was the challenge--to see if I could set up shop within 30 days.”

Come Friday, the blinds will be reopened. A new sign advertising “Trends/Family Hair Care” will hang over the once-empty shop front with the workstations that had been silenced. Once again, there will be conversation and laughter inside.

It will be cause for some celebration, if only to serve as notice that the drumbeat of American business goes on.

Light where once there was darkness.

And there’s no fear whatsoever? he is asked.

“There’s always some fear,” he says but quickly adds, “I can’t really say I’m scared. I’m pretty confident about it. I feel pretty good, especially about this location. It’s like I know I can make it in here.”

And finally . . . have you forgotten anything, he is asked.

“I’ll know Friday,” he says.