Mark Woolley

[00:00:25.690] - Nicolina

How did you get into hairdressing? You've got a lot of interests. Music, art, fashion. So why hair?

[00:00:33.250] - Mark

Well, I think hair probably encompasses all of those things. I met some really great guys when I was 15 or 16, very young. I went to get my haircut there, and these guys were running Sacks. They had a training Academy in the north of England where I'm from and I went into their salon. They obviously did a really great haircut, which I think in my 15 years of being alive, at that point, I hadn't had yet. And I remember being quite blown away by that. I ended up running into these guys a few times, and somehow I ended up having a trial day in their salon. It was weird. After day one, I thought I could do this, and I think I'd always wanted to do something creative and I've always wanted to own my own business and that I felt I could do both in that arena.

[00:02:24.990] - Nicolina

Let's talk a bit about the journey and the awards that brought you to being here today?

[00:02:43.550] - Mark

The great thing with the industry is some great awards that recognise people. A lot of my early awards, all of them pretty much were all for hair, for doing hair. I remember winning the first one when I was about 17. In the last few years they often have been for business. This year, we've won quite a few awards with Electric Space, we've won two Innovation awards, the British Areas in Business Awards and the Creative Head Awards, so that's good. Really it's all about your vision and staying true to your vision.

[00:04:33.250] - Nicolina

You're an industry leader, but now you're leading the industry in a whole new direction.

[00:04:39.010] - Mark

I think there's some really exciting changes happening, globally. And obviously, a lot of those with the way people work, the way people communicate and collaborate with each other. So it's good, I think, to be constantly progressing and trying to push the boundaries.

[00:05:03.850] - Nicolina

So now we're talking about pushing boundaries and obviously evolving. Let's talk about the Electric Brand and Electric Space, where we are today. What creatives are here?

[00:05:25.980] - Mark

With electric, it's been an amazing journey. I think the most important thing to say was it was always a brand, not a person. And a lot of our peers in the industry, the individual is the brand, like Trevor Sorbee and Charles Worthington but the industry is changing.

[00:05:55.150] - Mark

If we can make it a brand that everyone could be a part of, we could grow it and we could have some great people in our group that would help us create something that was successful. And I think probably having started my career at Sacks, it was a brand. So I was used to being part of a team and talking about us and we. It was a natural progression. So Electric obviously started as a salon. We opened the Film and Photographic Studio nearly 20 years ago. Now, 17 years ago.

[00:06:53.150] - Mark

Then we started making products, so that grew and expanded into some other countries, I think probably the last ten years, we've become a product company now that owns salons and a farm, a studio and now a shared workspace. So Electric has always been about innovation. It's always been about people. It allows me to step away from it from time to time when I need to and get my head around a few things and have some new ideas.

[00:13:45.470] - Mark

We've got this farm in Sussex, we're going to have events there. It's got a big medieval barn that's 800 years old. I've come away thinking, it would be great to have weddings here. So we've hired somebody who's going to plan all of that and put 20 or 30 weddings a year on as well. Which, if you ask me, six months ago, would I be doing that I would have thought no. There's a party there where we had Norman Cook come and do a whole DJ set for 2 hours. So we've already had some good things in there.

[00:16:49.800] - Nicolina

So let's talk about the trends and the industries and interests you have. How do you influence the trends? What do you think the trends are these days in the hair industry?

[00:17:19.700] - Mark

Trends now are very fast, they're very quick and they're also global because everyone's connected digitally. So I think we can see there's that kind of 70s Bohemian type vibe that exists in London, but it also exists in New York, Toronto. That is a global trend. It's almost a piece of culture. We've just had London Fashion Week and the whole thing about that was graphic shapes. It was kind of architectural shapes. You can see that if you think about hair for girls, it's been long and undone, hasn't it? For hairdressers, they have probably had less chance to cut shapes into people's hair. So a lot of the creativity moved into men's hair. You see men's hair being very tailored. Now that's becoming a bit more undone.

[00:21:12.980] - Mark

Sustainability has always been a powerful agenda. Long before it became fashionable, we were always making product from the day one, where we sourced all of our own ingredients, raw materials, chemical compounds, everything that went into the product. We've always had recyclable packages, but I feel now we probably have to take that upper level. We've got a couple of bottles that are totally compostable and the bodies compostable. The bodies of our normal packaging are recycled and recyclable. The trick is, quite often things have got pumps and strays. The hardened polymers they have to use to make that the plastic, they're very difficult to recycle. So there's some challenges. We've got our own water source at the farm, so it comes up from about 400 metres below.

[00:24:58.710] - Nicolina

Where is your creativity going in the next few years?

[00:25:10.390] - Mark

Well, there are two things I'll always do. I don't see myself never not picking up a pair of scissors, I'll always do that, I think probably will with art as well.

Quick Fire Questions

[00:00:11.220] - Nicolina Favourite song of all time?

[00:00:18.710] - Mark

My favourite song of all time is Angel by Jimmy Hendrix. I cut the hair of this band, an up and coming band called Picture this. I went to see them the other night at the Brixton Academy and they have a song called 95 and I thought it was amazing. I love seeing a gig and you come away and think I love that song. So that has been added to one of my playlists.

[00:01:37.760] - Nicolina

Favourite tool?

[00:02:08.510] - Mark

It's the scissors.

[00:03:28.810] - Nicolina

Coffee or tea? But now, I need to include juice. So coffee, tea or juice.

[00:03:34.330] - Mark

I like all three. There's a time and a place for all three.

[00:03:39.660] - Nicolina

But you could only have one left. What is a given?

[00:03:43.900] - Mark

It would have to be juice

[00:03:52.810] - Nicolina

Couture or street fashion?

[00:03:55.970] - Mark

Street.

[00:04:17.830] - Nicolina

Between art and music?

[00:04:22.840] - Mark

Music because it's so important for doing all the other stuff.

[00:04:29.770] - Nicolina

The music, classical or rock?

[00:04:35.070] - Mark

I'd have to say rock.

[00:04:57.840] - Nicolina

Your preferred social media of choice?

[00:05:02.460] - Mark

Instagram, definitely not Snapchat.

[00:05:07.770] - Nicolina

In hair, natural color hair colour or coloured hair?

[00:05:12.250] - Mark

For me personally, natural tones. I do a lot of curly hair. I end up putting a lot of waves into people's hair. But I've done quite a few things over the years. I've used Curlfomers from some years ago and I've kept them, I pulled them out a few times to do shoots and things like that.

[00:06:01.160] - Nicolina

Forest or beach getaway?

[00:06:04.810] - Mark

At the moment, beach with the weather like this, I haven't been in anywhere for ages. Winter fashion but summer vibes every day of the week. If someone said, Bring the sun out and get your T shirt back on. Yes. But you can wear better jackets in the winter.