7 days ago
Meet our regional rising stars: Birmingham
Minnie Nguyen's business selling Afro-Caribbean wigs and hair extensions was steady, but she kept worrying that the market was too small to achieve significant growth.
'I thought, 'We're missing 50 per cent of the world: men',' she says at her crisp white-walled headquarters in Birmingham city centre. 'We needed something for men, and I was brainstorming and looking at everything my husband had.
'One day I picked up his electric hair trimmer. I thought, 'This is ugly: it's heavy, it's noisy, it's got an annoying cord. I could make something better than this'.' And she did. 'I sketched a design for something sleeker, ergonomic and cordless.'
A factory in China was all set to mass produce Nguyen's trimmer when a mysterious illness that would soon be known as Covid-19 was first reported in China. To get manufacturing of the trimmers prioritised Nguyen and her husband liquidated all their savings and sent more than £100,000 in cash up front to the Chinese factory. 'It worked and they came,' she says. 'It was perfect timing as everyone needed one in lockdown.'
The speed with which it all happened threw up some challenges, however. 'The factory needed a name for the new company within 24 hours,' she says. Nguyen came up with Barber Boss. 'It had to be Barber something and I wanted a second B and boss sounds premium.'
The trimmer was listed on Amazon and immediately started to sell well. 'Within eight months we had hit £1 million in sales,' she says. 'Amazon said they'd never seen a company with just one product do so well.'
Amazon even offered to buy the company but Nguyen, 35, who was born in Vietnam and has lived in Birmingham since graduating from Warwick University, rejected the offer — three times. 'It was amazing that they offered to buy us, but I felt like I could grow this really big on my own.'
From that single trimmer in 2020, Barber Boss has expanded to 60 products including electric toothbrushes, water picks, foot files and trimmers for pets. Another 20 will be released this year as the company expands into female-focused products such as curling irons and hair straighteners. Prices start at £15 and most are no more than £36.99, which Nguyen has set as an affordability limit.
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Sales are expected to come in at just under £5 million this year, and pre-tax profits at about £100,000. Staff numbers have grown from just three when Barber Boss started to 18.
Most of the employees work on product design, quality control and customer service. 'Responding to customers quickly is the most important thing,' she says. 'Where every other brand sends an auto-message saying, 'Thanks for your email we will respond in two to three working days' we respond immediately. It removes anxiety for the customer and it means they will advocate for us.
Traditional word of mouth is also working wonders for Shaun Adams, managing director of Birmingham Case Makers, at his workshop in Hamstead about a 20-minute drive north from Nguyen's office. 'The Football Association, the Champions League, Wimbledon and the King,' Adams, 62, says, rolling off the names of his customers. 'You couldn't ask for a better client list.'
Adams's company makes the boxes in which the FA Cup medals are presented to the winning players. His team make similar presentation boxes for OBE, CBE and MBE medals, and cases for replicas of the Wimbledon trophies given to the winners on Centre Court. 'We make boxes for all sorts of bling,' he says.
The workshop, on an industrial estate opposite a Lidl supermarket, is a hive of activity with a dozen staff working at various stages of a product line that turns 8ft x 4ft MDF boards you would find in a DIY store into beautifully ornate cases lined with satin and decorated in gold leaf and faux leather.
Adams, who bought the company in 2012, says it has never advertised. 'Everything is a referral and we are known for our quality craftsmanship.' Revenue has doubled since Adams took charge to just over £500,000 a year. 'But it has been a hard journey to build back up since the pandemic when we lost 80 per cent of our orders in two weeks.'
Adams says the pandemic taught him that 'there's always something new you can learn'. He enrolled on a government-sponsored Help to Grow management course at Birmingham City University. 'In manufacturing you can focus too much on what you're making,' he says, 'without thinking enough about what's best for the future of the business and the client.'
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Now he has plans to diversify both the product and the customer base. 'We're a second-tier supplier, which means what we do adds value to the main product, but what we make isn't a standalone product and we don't have end customers. We wanted to make a main product. We make boxes so I thought, 'What could be a box and a product?''
An idea hit him when his father died. 'My mother took a box to collect the ashes, but unfortunately it wasn't big enough for the ashes so she left with half of them in a plastic bag,' Adams, from nearby Smethwick, says. 'I thought there's an opportunity for a nicely produced ashes box.'
Other ideas include storage boxes for children's toys, stationary boxes, and boxes for poker, bridge and chess sets, which he hopes to sell at Harrods and Selfridges.
Bespoke high-end design is also the tactic being deployed by Nil Chohan at his metal fabrication factory in Stirchley, right across town on the southern outskirts of the city.
Chohan's company, Instinct Hardware, has been making high-quality architectural hardware — think door handles and bathroom fittings — for 40 years. But as overseas competitors have been able to make similar products much more cheaply, Chohan has directed the company towards one-of-a-kind designs for clients including Wembley Stadium, Southwark Cathedral, Cambridge Mosque and Red Bull's London headquarters.
'Now 50 per cent of our work is fully bespoke products, where we take it from customer's sketch to production and installation,' he says. 'It's much lower volumes, but the margins are definitely much higher and it's what we're gearing the business towards.
'We've invested close to £1 million into plant and machinery, and increased our design and engineering team from just myself and a fellow director to a team of four with apprentices as well.'
The focus on bespoke designs has helped to steadily lift turnover to £4.3 million in the year to the end of March 2025, and Chohan is targeting more this year. 'The plan is to double it in the next five years.'
Another short drive away is Lauren Guthrie behind the counter at her beautiful mock Tudor haberdashery shop on Alcester Road in Moseley. 'It may sound old fashioned,' says Guthrie, 40. 'But making and mending clothes is more popular than ever as people want to make their own designs and it is a great activity for clearing away stress.'
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Guthrie started her business, called Guthrie and Ghani, in 2013 just as she was appearing on the BBC's Great British Sewing Bee (in which she was a finalist), but it was during the pandemic and lockdown that sales really took off, doubling from £500,000 a year to about £1 million.
Now the Moseley store has become something of a destination for sewers from across the world, who follow it on social media and place huge orders online. Guthrie plans to host more events and meet-ups in the store as well as expanding into manufacturing-related products after buying the sewing tracing paper brand Patterntrace.
While the pandemic boosted Guthrie's business, it 'annihilated' Lakh Hayer's company Honeymoon Dreams. 'We sold £1 million worth of holidays in January 2020,' he says at his offices back in Birmingham city centre. 'Then the phones just stopped ringing.'
Hayer had to lay off staff, but now the company is growing again. Revenue jumped from £1.5 million in 2023 to £2.5 million in 2024. 'Couples are spending an average of £8,000 on their honeymoons,' he says. 'Some are going up to £30,000 on bespoke worldwide trips.'
Sometimes, though, it can be hard to get customers to spend such large amounts without meeting them face-to-face to reassure them so Hayer, 44, plans to open a physical shop in the city's Jewellery Quarter. 'It's the perfect place for us to open. It had been the plan before the pandemic, and now we're going to do it and become the first honeymoon retail outlet in the UK.'
