Frankie Campo and Jordan Sammarco opened Frankie and Jordan Hair Studio in Brooklyn a year-and-a-half ago after graduating from Paul Mitchell Academy. The LGBTQ woman-owned barbershop and salon is located at 570 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, and the strong small business has been thriving since its inception.
The ethos at Frankie and Jordan is to “give you more good hair days than ever thought possible, in a fun, sexy, comfortable for all environment.” Because of the shop's layout, clients can have a barbershop or a salon experience in the same place but still be separate.
More Good Things: They offer free booze, are super dog friendly, and are located in a great neighborhood with restaurants and anything you need within a block.
We caught up with Frankie and Jordan to get the details on how their business is growing and their strategy for the future.
AS: What made you select Brooklyn as your place of business? What is the local market like? How are you involved in the community?
F&J: Well, prior to opening the business one of us worked in Long Island City, Queens, and the other in Park Slope, Brooklyn; so we were trying to find somewhere close to the middle so not to disproportionately inconvenience either of our clienteles. Greenpoint/Williamsburg area seemed to be the best fit for those reasons as well as a cultural fit for us and our clients. We started looking for spaces and pretty quickly in our search we found a space that checked literally all of our boxes and was pretty much on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg (in Greenpoint, though).
Our involvement in the community mostly consists of supporting as many local small businesses as possible, and then recommending them to our clients. We both know the power of word of mouth and like to pay it forward!
We’ve also participated in local events like Shop Small Greenpoint, a week of special sales for people who subscribe to local small businesses.
We hope to continue getting more involved and also open our space to pop ups by other artists or local vendors.
AS: How has business been since you opened? What has surprised you the most?
F&J: Business has been great. Our clients have really shown up for us, literally by patronizing us, but also by telling their friends, writing reviews and posting us to their socials. It’s really lovely, we give it our all and it feels like it’s truly received that way and appreciated. We’ve both been surprised at how few clients we’ve lost moving from our previous jobs to our new space. We know time is everything - especially in NYC, so it really means a lot to us that people are spending any additional time commuting to us for their hair.
What is your philosophy as it pertains to the health of your clients' hair?
F&J: We are always happy to answer questions like this because we feel very strongly about maintaining the integrity of our clients’ hair. Having their hair just look good walking out of our door isn’t good enough for us, we want to ensure that it still FEELS good and is properly treated so that it is easy for our clients to maintain on their own in between appointments.
Sometimes that means multiple sessions to achieve the perfect blonde, rather than frying it in one shot to get the desired tone immediately and sacrificing the texture and health. Long lasting hair that feels as good as it looks is what we’re after.
AS: Can you share what it's like to open an LGBTQ woman-owned barbershop and salon? How is it laid out? How do your customers like the setup?
F&J: It feels great to have been able to open what feels like our dream space, on our own, our way. We take a lot of pride in what we’ve done and have been truly pleasantly surprised on how little we have felt the fact that we are LGBTQ and women. Everyone we have dealt with, from landlord, to contractors, distributors, etc., have treated us with respect. We know how extremely fortunate we were for this to have been our experience, but also hope it is a sign of better times.
Our space is laid out like a salon in the front, and a barbershop in the back. We were really hoping to find a space that would allow us to work together— but separately, and we were lucky to find exactly that.
The salon is the first two thirds of the space and then there is an open doorway (no door) to the barbershop portion in the back. We think both clienteles really enjoy getting an eye and an ear in to how the other side does things, while also having separation to ensure everyone’s comfort.
AS: What are your plans for the future?
F&J: Our immediate future plans mostly consist of growing, gaining more hair artists and thriving together. Further future plans definitely include creating a product line that is versatile and diverse enough to cover the needs of both types of clientele.
Right now we have to each carry our own lines to satisfy the needs of all of our clients. We have both found that there are brands that do short hair products really well and brands that do long hair products really well, and that when we try brands that claim to do both well, we are always disappointed. So to create something ourselves that would solve that problem is definitely a future goal.