Giuliano Dore, Co-Founder of Get Groomed / Mobile Barbers

In this episode of the Menswear Style Podcast, we speak with Giuliano Dore, co-founder of Get Groomed, the London-based mobile barbering platform bringing professional grooming directly to customers’ homes, offices, hotels, events and more.

Founded in 2017 by Giuliano and his wife, Sabrina Vijay Kumar, Get Groomed was born from a frustrating personal experience. Living in Shoreditch and working long hours, Giuliano struggled to find a barber who understood exactly what he wanted. After one particularly poor haircut left him waiting months for his hair to grow back, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

The solution was simple: find excellent barbers, vet them properly and bring them to the customer.

We explore how that initial idea developed into a technology-driven mobile grooming business. Giuliano explains how customers can select their location and service through the Get Groomed platform, with the system then matching them with suitable local barbers based on availability, skill set, hairstyle and hair type.

The company’s proprietary matching and geolocation technology is a major part of its proposition, and Giuliano explains how the system has evolved to manage everything from booking notifications and barber profiles to matching the right professional with the right customer.

We also discuss the surprisingly complex challenge of building a network of trusted barbers. Get Groomed has developed a rigorous vetting process involving qualification checks, references and skills assessment, ensuring that customers receive the quality of service they would expect from a premium traditional barbershop — without having to leave home.

Giuliano shares some of the early days too, when the company was still recruiting its first barbers and interviews were taking place in his Shoreditch flat. What began with a small group of professionals has since developed into a much broader network covering London and expanding into other parts of the UK.

Convenience is at the heart of the business, but Giuliano explains why Get Groomed also aims to challenge the perception that mobile grooming is an expensive luxury reserved for celebrities and wealthy clients. The company’s ambition is to make high-quality professional barbering available to anyone who values their time, regardless of where they live.

The conversation explores the changing nature of modern grooming, from longer working hours and busy lifestyles to the growing demand for personalised services and the desire to receive a more considered consultation rather than a rushed haircut.

We also look at the business opportunity outside London. While major cities such as Manchester are an obvious focus for expansion, Giuliano explains why smaller towns and underserved areas could be equally important, particularly locations where customers may have limited access to quality barbers or specialists for particular hair types.

The corporate and events market is another major opportunity, with Get Groomed providing services for businesses, weddings, festivals and other occasions where bringing professional barbers directly to a location can transform the experience.

And the future could become even more technology-focused, with Giuliano revealing plans to introduce AI into the platform to further improve the customer experience and make the barber-to-customer matching process even more intelligent.

A fascinating conversation about entrepreneurship, technology, barbering, customer service and the future of men's grooming — and how an awful haircut in Shoreditch ultimately led to a business determined to put a professional barber wherever you need one.

www.menswearstyle.co.uk

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Men's Wear Style Podcast. I'm your host, Pete Brooker, and today on the show I am talking to Juliano Dorr. He is one of the co-founders of Get Groomed. Get Groomed aimed to bring classic barbering to your doorstep and provide you the best while saving you from the hassle of lengthy wait times and travel to and from the barber shop. The mantra is your style, your place, your time. Get Groomed connects you with professional barbers in your area so that you can have the finest grooming services that caters to your style at a place and time that suits you. And to tell you more about Get Groomed is the co-founder, Juliano Dor.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Um we are based in London, UK at the moment. Um so yes, so that's uh uh where we operate most of our operations. So I'm the co-founder of Get Groom Mobile Bobbers. Um Get Groom has been founded in 2017. Uh, the other co-founder is Sabrina Vijay Kumar, who happens to be my wife. We are currently the most popular website to book mobile barbers in the UK. Um, our niche offering is about that our barbers can go to your home, office, hotel. We also do events like festivals and weddings, and our barbers they come with their tools, provide services like aircut bed trim, with shaves, skin fades, and we take up everything, we take care of everything, including cleaning.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Fascinating. So take us back 2017. You and your is it your then wife, or were you on the path to getting married?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

On the path.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Okay, great. And so, where did the idea come from? Who where did it germ?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

So there's a funny story about that. Um so I've always been interested by the male beauty industry. I come from a place where um men looking good and taking care of themselves was the norm. Um, maybe it's my Italian background, maybe it's the way the role models in my life have always been. Uh, but being well-dressed and well-groomed was always really necessary for me. Um, the idea behind Get Groom started when I was in London in 2017. I was trying to grow a very hipster combo consisting of a man bun with the sides and the back being neatly cut, uh, commonly called undercut man bun. I don't know if you know about undercut man bone.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

I'm not familiar.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

It's uh it's a very it's aggressively hipster. It was aggressively hipster in 2017.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

So I know of the haircut, but I just never knew of the terminology. Um so now I know.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

So yeah, I mean, I was living in Shoreditch in London. I was working for a media agency, uh, also in Shoreditch. I was drinking IPA, I was it was clearly intentional. Clearly, um that was a good thing. Where did you go?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Where did you go drinking around Shoreditch? Can you remember any of the bars?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Um that's I gotta have to uh I'm gonna have to come back to you about this one. Um, I remember one beer garden that was really really popular near near Blues Kitchen. So there was this restaurant called Blues Kitchen. There was this really, really popular uh beer garden.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Uh it's just one of those things when down brick lane, down that way.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Um uh close by now, no, down not too far. Uh Blues Kitchen. It's it's um I I gotta I gotta I gotta check because my my directions are terrible.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

So if I find well as long as the IPAs were good, that's the main thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah, that was the most important. That was the most important.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Sorry, I interrupted you. Carry on.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Oh no, no, it's it's absolutely cool. It's absolutely cool. So I wasn't uh back in the days, I was newish to London, I was not really sure about shops, you know. I couldn't find ones I was looking for online. So I was I did an attempt to one shop in Camden Town where it was not that great. I was rushed like a farm animal. Uh, the result was atrocious. It took me months to regrow my hair and to redo my cut. So, you know, an undercut undercut manbone, you have to cut some specific part of your hair, and if you if there's a hole, it's over, it's you know, game over. So um I decided after that to take the situation in my own hand and start researching and vetting barbers. I was also working 8 to 8, so um I was working a lot. I could only go to the salon after 8 p.m. So having a bobber to come to mine was a better plan, uh especially after vetting. So at some point, um we get that process going on. I get a nice bobber working with me, comes to my comes to my place, and with Sabrina, we're discussing about it, and we realized that there was a big demand for people like myself who started, you know, who wanted to do something more, wanted to have some more um some better services, you know, not not rushing, having a good consultation, something at home, something a little bit more of a luxury, you know. And uh we started working on a website for people to book with us, with the barbers that we previously vetted. And then the success was immediate, and we started getting queries from from individuals, but also from companies. And when we started getting queries from companies, that's where we knew that's when we knew that we found something great.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Interesting. Yeah, I do like the stories that begin with, well, I got this done and it wasn't good, and I knew there must be something out there that was better. And when you realize there's nothing out there that's better, then I better create it myself. Uh, so I find I find a lot of businesses that start with the necessity to please oneself and to corner that market, and then realize actually there must be more people out there other than just me that need this. So let's fill that gap.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Absolutely. I'm I'm proud to say I'm the first customer of Gig Room. I will always be. I will always be. It's just I know I know my barbers, I know the process works, I they know, they know all you know the process work as well. It's just so familiar, it's so convenient. Um, you know, obviously convenience is very big for us as well, because you know, we we set up our own schedule, we decide, okay, can can I have a barber coming to my place um at specific time. And also, you know, all the barbers are vetted, they're certified, they come with reviews, ratings, so you we know who we are talking to, and that is really important to us. And um, so yeah, it's been it's been quite fun. It's been quite fun.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

So Blues Kitchen in Shoreditch is down Curtin Road, and so you're not anyone that knows where the barbecue is, it's just north of the barbecue. And you're around the corner from Bricklane, so you've got Dishume down there as well. That's one of the more popular restaurants, right? I'm sure you know Dishume.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Of course, of course, everybody knows Dishum.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Yeah, and then the Truman Brewery is just there. Okay, so I know where you are. All right, well, I I don't think I've tried out the Blues Kitchen, but I'm gonna give that a go.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Um great, their wings are fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Yeah, but I'm I'm looking at the images already and I haven't eaten, and I'm just uh starting to salivate, but that's um luckily that's not audible. So tell me, Juliana, you've you've started the business or you've had the idea. Um, I'm wanting to know what the next process is. You've now got to kind of get a groundswell of barbers together and you know, get a team basically and build your army. So, where does that journey begin for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

So um the way it started is we started recruiting barbers. Uh, we it took us nine months to build a website and uh to get a decent number of barbers to work with us. Obviously, we needed fitted and qualified barbers. We cannot just hire anybody. And uh from there we have a launch and we are promoting our website everywhere. Uh, we started with London, because obviously that's where we work, that's where we are. Uh, we do a lot of events, we do a lot of uh promotional operations just to get the word out there. Um, after that, you know, it's it's fairly simple once the onboarding is done well. You know, you get get your barbers, you know, they know how to accept how to use the app, um, they know how to go to the place. Um, but obviously, I I need to rework that a little bit, uh, rephrase it a little bit. So let me explain how the app works. The app works a little bit like all those uh modern uh booking apps, like you know, one example was the one uh Uber when we book a cab, and um when people the the cab can come to your place. Um so we built it in that way, in a sense that um the user, the customers can log in and um set up the address, set up the kind of service they want, they make a booking, and then we have all our bubbers who are in the area receive a notification and they can accept it. Obviously, there is a filtering in place based on the hairstyle, the um the type of hair as well, you know, between European, Asian, Afro hair. You know, some bubbers are uh specialized in different types of hair. So there's this whole system in place to match the right bubble with the right customer and the right customer with the right bubber. And then after that, once this is done, once there is a match, uh the bubber comes, provide the service, clean up, and then mark the booking as complete. And uh this is it. It's uh it's fairly intuitive, it's uh it's fairly fast, and um from there we were in a position where we just needed to cover more ground. So now we have covered all of London, and then we have hired more barbers, and then we started looking at more cities, and that's where we are right now.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Interesting. And is there some kind of I want to say like a patent on the tech that you're using, or is it basically riffing on the same tech that Uber, like you just mentioned, that sort of model when it comes to the app, is it's is it something that is a um oh I'm groping for the for the word, but it's basically what you're using on the app, is it unique for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Our matching algorithms unique, so our system of matching and geolocation um is is definitely uh proprietary. So proprietary, that's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

I'll edit that in late, Julia. I'll edit that in late and and claim it as my word.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

No problem at all. And um, so so yeah, we we worked, we spend a lot of time working on this algorithm um to find the right way, because obviously there's a system of notifications, we need to keep the customers notified when a booking is accepted, when the barber is on their way, uh to you know to get them to know about uh the notification, which kind of barber is is accepting, you know, the profile, all all of it is a complex system that we built to make sure that the service is we we find the right barber for the right customer and the right customer for the barber. Um it's it's I wouldn't say it's fairly complex, but obviously because you know I built the tech, but um it's still something that is really important to us. Um and now we're thinking of putting sparting a little bit of AI on top of it just to improve the experience as well. So this is something that we are actually actively working on at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Interesting. Okay. Well, I'm also interested to know about what hurdles you come across in a business like this. Maybe not I guess your day-to-day, do you have uh common problems where you go, ah, this again or that again, but you've now figured out a way to fix because it's a patterned problem. Do you see what I mean? Is there something that comes up more often than not than not?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The day-to-day is pretty running pretty smooth. However, we did have some challenges in the beginning. I think one of the biggest challenges we had it was to reach people and tell them that having a luxury service like having a hairstylist or barber at your home, you know, it's not something that is only for billionaires or TV stars. It could be something for you, it could be for you know for you, for me, for anybody. And it is actually possible and it is not that expensive. And some people wouldn't believe it. It's they were absolutely sure that they had to keep on going to the same cramped salon to get the same haircut because the shop owner cannot do different type of haircuts, and you know, the whole process without consultation in 10 minutes. They were sure that the they were sure that there was no alternative, that their life was set in that way, and regarding beauty, regarding their the way they look, the way they present themselves, they were condemned to this kind of lifestyle. While we had to come to the people and tell them, actually, there's a solution out there. Actually, you could get barbers who have won awards, barbers who are in very, very working in very, very fancy shops in London, working to your house. Because obviously we work with barbers who do that full-time, but we also have barbers who do that part-time, who do that, you know, there's a little bit of if they decide their own schedule, it's very flexible. So we we were there to tell them actually, you could get award-winning barbers to come to your home. This is actually possible, and you know, we had to convince people and it took a little bit of time, but now I think it's it's it's there with you to stay. So um the challenge that's that was one of our challenges.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Do you have to so the audition process, the way that you vet the barbers, do they all have to come around to you first, Juliano, and groom you, and then you kind of give it the thumbs up or thumbs down?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Uh, that's our secret recipe. I I don't know if I can talk about it that much, to be honest with you. Um uh, we we do have um a secret source for our interview process because it's also part of our business. Um let me just say that all our barbers are very, very well vetted, very, very well certified. We are checking for uh references, we're checking for degrees, we're translating um degrees if sometimes they're not from the UK. We are we have we have a very, very strong vetting process. We have some system in place where we can check in real time about their skills. Uh obviously, you know, we can I cannot tell you a lot more about it because it's a little bit of our secret source. You know, we have a process where uh we have to hire a lot of barbers at some point. Let's say I want to let's say we want to open a new city like Liverpool, we will have to hire, let's say, 50 barbers just to cover ground and you know availabilities, depending on you know the volume that we're expecting. So obviously we have to have a very tight process for that. Um, but yeah, all I can say is that it's a very, very rigorous process that we have um where we check uh our barber skills both before meeting them and while meeting them.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Interesting. Yeah, I guess that's gotta be that's gotta be the the ultimate, hasn't it? Making sure that the quality is up to scratch, but having so many under your wing as well, but making sure that they're all on a on a level, on the level that's required. I would just say, like, for example, if I had a lot of family members all strewn out around the country, I would just use this as a a great exploitation tool, but like, well, you gotta go and cut my mum's hair now, and then we'll see after that, and then my brothers after that, and then my uncle, you know, I would go through the whole line of family, and then you know, just when the hair grows back in about two months' time, begin the audition process again.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm not gonna lie, in the beginning, we were um doing interviews in my flat in Shortage, so we had barbers coming all the way to Shortage. We were struggling to find friends, you know. Oh, uh, can you have oh, but my hair is already short. Oh, I don't have a beard. You know, it's we were looking for friends all the time. Okay, you want a free haircut? You know, we need to check this barber. So in the beginning, 2017, it was uh hilarious. It was hilarious. Um, we are so grateful because some of the those barbers they give us a chance. Sometimes, you know, we just you just see a job offer out there, and you have to go to this lad's apartment in shortage to to show that you're a barber. It's you know, obviously, um, you know, you everybody gotta start somewhere, right? And I'm really grateful because some of those barbers gave us a chance, and ever since we've been working with with some of our barbers since 2017. Um it it all started in an apartment in shortage, so um, yeah, but now our process has evolved and we are a lot more pro than before, but you know, we gotta start somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:13

And can you branch out as well? Like, so you have I I'm imagining Edward Scissorhands when a groomer comes around, they cut one person's hair, and then they start working on the dog in between times while the other person goes out as a cigarette, and then you kind of go, Well, actually, now I can double bubble it. I can do the dog, the cat, and the human whilst I'm all here.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Ah, this is not something we uh thought about.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Um you can you can take that to the bank, Juliano. I'm just buying it. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

That's it. This is uh this is a one trillion dollar business plan right there, Pete.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Well, you you're already on your way, right? So you've got London, I know it's locked in, Birmingham as well, is on the books. So you mentioned Liverpool, is that where you're looking to spread your your net further now?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

So another big city that we start covering is Manchester. Um, I am thinking of Liverpool. That was just an example, obviously. But it is um in a corner of my head, in my mind. Um, I do love the culture of this city. Um, it's it's something that I think would be a really good fit for what for the service we provide. Um but we also have a strategy where we cover a lot of small towns as well. Um what we found is that there's some kind of beauty desserts in a lot of places in the UK where there's no shop in a five-mile radius, sometimes in a 10 mile radius. And this is where our barber, this is where our solution comes really handy. And um, obviously the big cities are really important, but we also want to focus on the small towns because those desserts, uh, those people living in those places where there are not enough shops or not enough shops for the hair type. This is also where we want to go.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

But then you got to think also. I when I hear that sort of talk, I I think about if you're on the high street and there's nothing but fish and chip shops, right? You go, Wow, the last thing this town needs is another fish and chip shop. I'm gonna start up uh an Indian, and then the Indian just doesn't take off because all the town wants is fish and chips, right? So my point is if you're in a town where there's uh there's there's no barbers, maybe it's not the sort of town that requires that. Maybe it's something that they're not thinking about. Whereas if you're in a town and it's just barber after barber after barber, and you think, while it's saturated, well, this could be your your way in because you know there's going to be a market, an appetite for what you're providing.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Oh, absolutely. I think I think there's definitely some truth in that. Um, obviously, we do a lot of market research. Um, we will not jump in every town to um to say, hey, we have a barber now, please uh book with us. Um we need to also check a lot of um there is a lot of factors to take in account. Um my goal, my dream will be to have a barber in every town in the UK, and to to you know, to bring this kind of convenience and this kind of luxury to any home and companies as well, because you know, the the business side, the corporate side is also very big. Um, so you know, we want to bring this kind of convenience and also this kind of um uh I'm looking for the word now. Now I'm the one missing the word.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yeah, well, look, I've I think if what what I derailed you by talking about fish and chips in Indian because we were talking, we were talking about wings before, and before we turned the mics on, it was Italian food. And I've got to say, I'm I'm ready to get something dammy. Listen, Giuliano, it's been a pleasure talking to you, learning about the business, the business get groomed.com. You can find some links over on the show notes at menswear style and follow you guys on the social. And yeah, I really enjoyed our chat. Thanks, Giuliano, and uh hope to hope to catch up with you soon. Thanks, Peter. We'll we'll go get some wings, we'll get uh an IPA and short it.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

That would be great. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

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