About Us

Our story starts on December 6th, 2006....

My birthday which is also the day I cut my first client in barber school.  Barber school lasted 9 months.  3 months into barber school I started building a clientele.  No one would let me cut their hair.  I eventually started advertising online that I was absolutely too busy to cut hair for free anymore and that I would have to start charging $5 for a haircut.  Then my phone started to ring.

Every extra second I had was spent in various barber shops in the area.  Talking, questioning, talking questioning, talking and questioning.

I worked in Glen Burnie for 2 years.  During that time I built a barber shop in my parents garage.  The same spot my father started his business 10 years earlier.  Two car garage with half of it framed out and insulated.  You would walk past oily lawn mowers into the air conditioned room where I spent several months painting, scraping, hanging, etc.  It really did look legit when it was finished minus the path you had to take on the way in.  I worked 8am-8pm in Glen Burnie and came home with people waiting in my drive way.  Midnight was my nightly cut off time.

Soon I found another job in the inner harbor.  This schedule allowed me to cut hair for an extra 2 hours every night.  7 months into this job I asked to go part-time because my personal clientele was starting to gain momentum.  This however didn't work for the owner so we parted ways on good terms.

In the garage if you brought a friend I cut your hair for free, no questions asked.  I even sold products, gave away drinks and snacks, and added a second chair where I hired my first informal apprentice.

For the First 2 years of my barber career, besides a rare 2 day vacation or so, I cut hair every single day.  I had approximately 75 days where I didn't cut hair at all (If you have 2 days off a week thats over 200 days off in a 2 year period).

September 1st, 2008......

Kisner's Barber Shop opened it's doors, taking over the infamous Gino's Barber Shop which at the time would have been 85 years old.  The shop itself was built in the 1920's.  Ritchie highway was still a dirt road.

We started out opening 5 days a week.  It was only me at the time.  1 month into the business an old co-worker and soon to be best friend approached me about cutting 1 day a week to rebuild her coloring clientele in the area.  Which in turn would open our demographic up to the other 51% of the population.  Not to mention a range of services most men and boys wouldn't dream of asking for.

I was patient and 6 months into Tracey coming aboard I pressured her into going full-time - or to find another job, which I would never have allowed to happen :) .  She agreed and I extended our hours to 6 days a week and then later to 7 days a week.  This was also the time when I changed the company logo from "Kisner's Barber Shop" to "Kisner's Barber Salon".  Making the business more appealing to women.

From this point until present time everything has pretty much been in fast forward.  At this point in time we currently have 6 barber stylists, 5 who are full-time and 1 massage therapist available for chair massages on the weekends.

We extended are product line more than a few times, added stations in the back, basically filled every nook and cranny with something to keep pace with our growth, updated our waiting area, perfected our shaving method, implemented many more services and honestly just put everything we had into this business.

Everyone here loves coming to work, we have no rules pertaining to our employees.  As long as the customers are well taken care of and kept happy at any expense that is all that matters.  Along with services perfected in a way that has never been seen before especially in the volume that we do them.

Our Future....

There are many things in this category that I really can't discuss too much in detail because they are literally going to enable us to compete on a national level with Haircuttery and Sportsclips.

What I can tell you however is that this is, in no exaggeration, only the beginning.  What we as a team have accomplished so far will be dwarfed in comparison to what we will have accomplished in the years to come.