Australian small firms take to four wheels

Hairdresser Ep Weatherhead has a business that is going places.

 

The owner of the first mobile barber's shop in Australia, from Tuesdays to Saturdays she parks her converted van at different locations across Sydney's beachside suburb of Maroubra.

Together with one part-time member of staff, she cuts the hair of 40 men and boys on an average day.

The business - called The Barber Van - was set up in 2011 with 60,000 Australian dollars ($46,000; £31,000) of investment. Ms Weatherhead, 46, says she now has up to 1,000 regular customers paying 25 Australian dollars for a haircut.

She maintains a timetable on her website, so that users can check where to find her on a particular morning or afternoon. And she has all the permits she needs from the local authority to allow her to park and run her business.

When Ms Weatherhead launched the mobile operation, she had been running a traditional bricks and mortar hairdresser salon for a number of years, but as the van quickly grew in popularity she closed the store to focus her efforts.

The Barber Van is part of a growing trend of Australian small firms hitting the road.

Led by the food sector, but now extending to other industries, more and more businesses are embracing the flexibility and significantly lower overheads that come from running their business on four wheels.