No. 3 Vol. 8
August 2021
Local Barber Shop Chain Offers Free Healthcare Coverage to Employees
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By Tina Pappas t’s become more of a rarity these days when owners of companies are able and willing to provide employees with any benefits, such as medical or dental insurance coverage. However, one particular barber shop makes the cut so-to-speak when it comes to their employees, becoming the only barber shop in the country to offer free healthcare for employees. The City Image Barber Shop, touted by its owners as “Not your average barber shop,” certainly lives up to its motto. Joe and Jeff Agnello, along with Izak Orero, are the owners of the business. The Agnello brothers who are Wayne natives, opened their first barber shop up in Little Falls in 2009. “I helped out my brother a little when he first opened the shop right across from Passaic Valley High School on Main Street,” recalled Joe. “It’s a great location and we had lot of students from the high school coming by for hair cuts. We still do.” According to Joe, they now have a total of nine owned and operated barber shops with a tenth one in the works. Izak, who was their first employee, eventually became manager of the Little Falls establishment and is now a partner. The trio had some difficulties in the beginning but they worked through as a team by creating a created a system, which resulted in the business prospering in recent years. “After we opened up our first location in Little Falls, we opened up our second
shop five years later in Oradell and became a chain,” he explained. “Although we struggled for a bit in 2013, Izak wanted to go to the Oradell location to fix it up. Business then tripled and he became a partner. We began to open more locations so I quit my job to work full-time for our business.” Joe added that teamwork was the reason the business has prospered, along with having structure and sticking with a vision they had early on. “We didn’t deviate from that vision and we were all in this for the long run,” he added. “This is what we’re about. You can go from being an apprentice, to a barber, to a manager and beyond. We care about our employees and their future and want them to be well. We push the boundaries of barbering and we are helping to create the standard for barbers.” Joe maintains that they’ve always done things differently. He added that they were the first in the area to offer a commission for barbers. They were also first in the area to also offer online booking in 2012 through their website, and the first to accept credit cards through their P.O.S. system. “We wanted to do things better so we were always long-term minded,” he recalled. “We thought ahead and wanted a better experience for our customers and our barbers as well, so we went with credit cards, which increased our business by 25 percent.” Joe also emphasized that their goal has always been to retain their barbers, and to
Owners of City Image Barber Shop are (from left) Joe Agnello, Izak Orero and Jeff Agnello.
simultaneously work towards elevating the industry with the hopes of having a positive impact on other barber shops around the country. Providing healthcare for employees was spearheaded by the recent quarantine, which left many other barber shops to close. He feels the reason they came out of the quarantine expanding their business with two new locations is because they are a solid company and do things the right away. “We saw how bad COVID-19 affected other barber shop businesses when they had no source of income. We also did close
for three months,” Joe said. “But the three of us came in the office for three months straight working on the business. While others were cutting staff, we were looking to make the better of it and invested in our employees regardless.” They also saw how a lot of barbers feared being sick with COVID-19 because of no healthcare insurance. “They said, ‘If I get this, how can I afford to get better?’” he explained. “It made us realize how the barber industry was compared to other fields when it came to continued on page 6
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