Franchising with Style
Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop franchisee Jennifer Quong on her journey into franchising: the community, the connections, and the support
Like any kind of business ownership, franchising is hard work. But the passionate entrepreneurs behind franchised small businesses know that they have the support of a franchise system behind them when they live their business dream! For the Canadian Franchise Association’s (CFA’s) Franchisee Appreciation Month, we had the chance to sit down with Jennifer Quong, a multi-unit Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop franchisee in Burlington, Ontario. Jennifer shared her journey: opening her first location in the middle of the pandemic, what inspired her to transition from education into franchising, and how community, flexibility, and strong franchisor support have shaped her business ownership experience.
CFA: Tell us a bit about your Tommy Gun’s business? When did you become a Tommy Gun’s franchisee?
Jennifer: My husband and I opened our first one basically in the middle of COVID. The original possession date was March 13th of 2020. Obviously, because of everything that happened on March 13th of 2020, our opening was pushed by a year. So our official opening date was March 21st of 2021. However, we kind of operated under really strict restrictions in Ontario. So, for ease of business, we say that we actually opened in March of 2022. That would have been the first time that we operated without any restrictions that were causing a negative impact on business.
CFA: What was it like actually starting up in the middle of the pandemic? How did you navigate that?
Jennifer: From our experience, the Tommy Gun’s corporate office was really great. They worked with our landlord to forgo a year of rent and to pay that out over staggered payments once the business was operating. We found them super supportive through all of the ups and downs. We were constantly watching the news and constantly reviewing updated procedures and policies. We had masks, we had gloves, we had dividers, and we had disinfectant; it was a lot. But throughout the whole thing, we kind of just did what we could to keep everybody happy, really honing in on the culture and the climate of the business that we wanted to run. Being supportive of employees, understanding that they were going through probably more distress than we were, and we really just took it one day at a time with support from corporate and support from our entire staff. It was a lot of learning, I guess!
CFA: How many locations do you own now?
Jennifer: We have two; they’re both in Burlington. Our Appleby line location is going into its fifth year, and it’s doing really well. Our Headon Forest location just had its one-year anniversary in June, and it’s plugging away with a really good growth trajectory.
CFA: What actually inspired you to open your own business? Have you always wanted to run a hair salon or any kind of business?
Jennifer: My family was a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather owned a number of businesses, so did my other grandparents and my dad, and my uncle. So I grew up in [an entrepreneurial] family.
I ended up going into education and was actually a school principal, so I had developed a lot of the skills required to run a business through that avenue of education. As a principal of the school, you have to staff and do professional development, do evaluations and run a budget, and make sure that your product, which would be education, is hitting the right target market. So, I had a lot of transferable skills that I had developed through working in both the public and private educational sectors.
But [the pieces came together when] we moved from Calgary, Alberta, to Burlington, Ontario. Out west, Tommy Gun’s is really a household name—that’s where my son went, that’s where my husband went. When we moved to Burlington, we got settled, and they were like, “we need to go get haircuts.” So the first thing we did was Google Tommy Gun’s, and the closest one to Burlington was Kitchener. And I was like, “well, we’re not driving 45 minutes for a haircut, that’s ridiculous.”
There’s a lot of competition in Burlington, but there’s nothing quite like Tommy Gun’s. I find that Tommy Guns has a little bit of a niche market, a very unique offering into that demographic, and quite a few differentiating services and experiences that set them apart from others. And so, we just couldn’t find anything that matched.
I went back on the website, and it said ‘franchise,’ and they’re looking for owners in Ontario. At this point, I had resigned from my role as a principal in Calgary and was looking for a job and looking for something to do, and wasn’t really sure if I was going to go back into education. I promised I’d take a year to resettle the kids and the family, and I just felt like it landed in my lap at an opportune time. So, I went out and that started the conversation with their head office in Kelowna and here we are.
CFA: What’s your favorite part about running your own business?
Jennifer: I love the community involvement piece. My kids are now older and both in university, so it keeps my husband and I connected to the community that we live in. We do tons of hockey sponsorships and tournament sponsorships, and we’re doing another golf tournament in a couple of weeks, where we sponsored a hole.
It just gets us out there. We’re very extroverted people. We get to know our neighbours. We get to know other small business owners in the community where we live. We get to be involved in what’s going on. We do a lot of charity work and give back to Burlington as a community. Those are the pieces that fill my cup, if you want to be cheesy about it. I really do enjoy the people side.
When I work in the business, I’ll work a couple of days a week at the front desk. I love talking to the clients and talking to the [parents], hearing about their kids. It’s just that people side, that community feel, that involvement within your community, that’s the stuff that we really enjoy.
CFA: What has franchising allowed you to do in your life or brought into your life that you wouldn’t have had without being a franchisee?
Jennifer: What owning franchises has really allowed me is flexibility. I work in our businesses a couple of days a week, but I have an outstanding manager who is basically my right-hand person. Her and I work really well together, which allows me great flexibility. it just gives that sense of ownership over your own life; that work-life balance. It gives you control that you don’t necessarily get if you work for a large corporation or you work for somebody else.
It also gives me creative control over what I do in the community. Obviously, it’s a franchise, we have to stay within [the brand’s] marketing and advertising and brand awareness. But within that, I kind of roll with what I see fit within my community. I enjoy that creative approach, and I really enjoy my voice being heard at a higher level within Tommy Gun’s, where we have marketing meetings and we have advertising meetings. I find all that really intriguing and energizing as we bring the brand to Ontario. And because we were one of the first owners in Ontario, there’s a lot of opportunity for us to be a part of where this goes as it heads east.
CFA: How does your franchisor support you as a business owner?
Jennifer: They’ve been super fantastic in all ways. Throughout COVID, we had great support in the development of policies and procedures that met with COVID guidelines. So it wasn’t totally on us to figure this all out and balance it. They had a team working to make sure that we met or exceeded health guidelines, and it went as far as purchasing power. A really great example of this is that the country came out and said they needed all this enhanced sterilization of things. Probably the minute that announcement was made corporate went and bought a ridiculous amount of Preempt and Barbicide for us to have. In other shops, nobody was that proactive, nobody was thinking that far ahead, and then you just could not get the things that you needed to operate because there was this supply and demand issue. I felt totally supported in policies and procedures, as well as product management. At the end of the day, Tommy Gun’s corporate is still a family-run organization that is wholeheartedly Canadian. And to us, that was really important. We didn’t want to be a number in a large corporate conglomerate. We wanted to be someone with a voice, someone who had relationships, someone who could be part of growth, could be part of a conversation, and felt valued.
CFA: What’s some advice you would give a new franchisee or a prospective franchisee who’s just starting their franchise journey?
Jennifer: I would say to take your time and do your research, find a company or organization that meets your values and that meets your expectations. Don’t be afraid to ask those difficult questions. I would ask them, how are you going to support me if this happens, or what are the expectations if this scenario were to take place. Don’t be afraid of the answer. Sometimes, we are afraid to ask those important questions because we don’t want to offend someone, or we don’t want to come off wrong or negative. But at the end of the day, those are the answers that you’re going to need when things are challenging or when you come across difficult times.
Learn more about franchising with Tommy Gun’s Original Barbershop
