From Gazza peroxide hair cuts to Peaky Blinders fashions, barber Demetri Christodoulou has seen it all during 42 years of business. We take a closer look at his Christodoulou’s Hair & Beauty Salon that has customers travelling from as far afield as Reading and celebrity singer Max George from The Wanted.
The boom in barber shops may be relatively new but in Birmingham’s North Western Arcade, Demetri Christodoulou’s family-run business has stayed the course.
Demetri Christodoulou – known as Jim – was just eight-years-old when he started hanging out with his dad, George, in his hairdressers on Saturdays. Over four decades later and Demetri is now running that same salon – with some of the same loyal customers, travelling from as far afield as Reading.
His dad George came from Cyprus to live in Small Heath when he was 16 in the 1960s, opening his first salon there in Green Lane. With ambitions to reach more people, he moved the business into the city centre in 1966. Yet it wasn’t until 1982 that he opened the long-term Christodoulou’s Hair & Beauty Salon in the arcade hidden off Corporation Street.
Demetri took over when his dad retired in 2009. Men and women’s hair is cut upstairs amid fresh cream and brown interiors and using brands from Moroccan Oil to GHD. While below are beauty rooms for manicures, spray tans, waxing, sunbeds and other treatments which attracted Max George from The Wanted in 2022.
“I’d help my dad as a kid so when I was 16, I went and trained doing two years at the well-known Raymond’s, which is now known as Regis, and then a year at Bernards,” recalls Demetri, now 50. “We still have customers from back then coming to us.”
He says customer loyalty and the experience they get from the Christodoulou family is behind the success of this independent shop. “Lots of generations come in together,” adds Demetri, who lives in Worcestershire.
“Parents who had their hair cut here now come with their children. We’ve got regular clients travelling to us from Reading and Hereford.
“It’s all about customer service. You look after everyone how you’d want to be treated and better. It’s how you’d look after your mum – with care and love.”
Over the decades, Demetri has been at the cutting edge of fashion trends. He’s done requests from ‘the Rachel’ when Jennifer Aniston’s Friends look was all the rage to Gazza’s peroxide style in Euro 1996.
Demetri Christodoulou and his team at the salon, above.
“I’ve never bleached so many men’s hair in my life,” he recalls with a laugh. “It was like a conveyor belt. One client was a guy in his 20s who is a surgeon now and I still take the mickey out of him.”
When it comes to new fashions, Demetri tells me that perms on young men in their late teens are trending along with Peaky Blinders haircuts. For women, colouring and balayage are popular.
Christodoulous salon is shown above in the 1980s, left, and now on the right.
Covid forcing shop closures was out of their control but Demetri is optimistic:
“The biggest thing that could help our business and probably other shops is if city centre companies got their staff back into the office more or ideally full time. That would help 100% as they’d be back around to use us between work.”
Christodoulou’s Hair & Beauty Salon can be found at 6 North Western Arcade, Birmingham city centre, B2 5LH. 0121 236 5845.