Gilbert barbers make cutting hair all in the family | Business

Talkative barbers fare best, according to Tony Starks, a lifetime barber and owner of Executive Men’s Grooming.

“I love, love my job. I love the people,” said the Gilbert resident, whose barber shops are in Gilbert, Higley, Mesa and Ahwatukee.

“I literally have a 20-minute conversation with people, and after you get to know them, you’re picking up conversations that you had before and you’re talking about things that aren’t surface level,” Starks said.

Cutting hair since 18, Starks is a barber from a family that has earned a living from the trade for three generations. He’s also nurturing a fourth-generation family member into the business.

The Starks family’s who’s-who of barbering is complicated.

It all started with Thelma Starks, who was a hair stylist in Tucson since the late 60s. Her two sons, Dan and Steve, became barbers as well.

Dan has since retired to Alabama. Steve owns and operates a shop in Tucson. Other family members, Linda and Becky, are also hair stylists.

Dan’s son, Tony Starks, began his career in Tucson and continued it in the East Valley, going on to establish four stores and branding them as Executive Men’s Grooming.

His brother, DJ Starks has majority ownership of the shop in Higley, while the outlets in Mesa and Ahwatukee have co-partnerships.

Calvin Montgomery, Tony’s 22-year-old stepson, is the fourth-generation member in the group.

Due to personal reasons, the family migrated from Tucson to Gilbert in 2014. Starks “fell in love” with the town and wanted to fulfill his dream of business ownership here.

An agent found him a spot in a rundown plaza at 785 W. Warner Road, just east of Cooper Road.

“And I, literally with my kids and my wife, we knocked on doors and that’s how I got my first clientele,” he said.

Starks was lucky that the business picked up fast. “This place was hungry for it,” he recalled.

Back in Tucson, his brother DJ, who was just out of high school and gearing up for a degree in computer applied sciences, discarded it for barbering instead.

He thought barbering better complemented his personality.

“I couldn’t just sit there at a computer; I’m a talker and I love to talk,” he said.

DJ studied at the Southern Arizona Barber College, moved to Gilbert, and began working with his brother who was experiencing a shortage of trained barbers in the area.

Since last year, DJ has been the happy owner of the Higley shop. “It makes avery good living,” he said.

DJ serves at least 50 clients each week – sometimes more – and accepts appointments or walk-ins. He cuts and styles men’s hair, shaves or shapes beards, and trims moustaches and sideburns.

He also talks to his heart’s content.

“This is a very good occupation if you like to talk. And I like the creativeness of it,” he said.

The creativeness comes with knowing what the customer wants and achieving it.

Satisfying customers is not easy, he said.

“You solve problems that you don’t think you would ever have to, like, really worry about – like how a haircut would lay down, how certain parts of the hair stick up and how to make that work for the haircut,” he said.

“It’s very cool to figure out those problems and see the end result and be proud of it.”

Has he ever made mistakes?

Many. When he first moved to the East Valley, he found beard trims in Tucson were different to trims in Gilbert.

“People liked to wear beards very short and low, more like what’s called a chin strap,” he said.

In Tucson, beards were fuller and shaped more naturally.

A customer here wanted a particular look for his beard and DJ did not pay enough attention to his requirements.

“So, I did his beard trim, and halfway through he stopped me from cutting, turned to face the mirror a little bit better and looked up and he said, ‘you messed up my beard already,’” he said.

“My heart dropped. I wanted to crawl underneath a rock.”

It was one of many important lessons he learned on the job.

“The more time you spend cutting hair, the less mistakes you’re going to make, obviously,” DJ said. “When you first start out, it’s a trial-and-error thing, but no one’s perfect.”

“And if you think that you’re done learning, that you’ve learned everything, that you don’t have any issues, that’s when you’re wrong,” he added. “You never want to be at that point. You can always get better.”

Other challenges rose for Executive Men’s Grooming, such as weathering the pandemic.

It was difficult for the service because it requires close proximity, Tony said. He placed plastic dividers at the stations, asked the barbers to wear masks, and was forced to close for about eight weeks.

He was also criticized for accepting cash because, at the time, cash was supposed to spread the disease.

Nowadays, the family business is thriving. Tony is looking for a fifth location, possibly in Queen Creek.

The barbers, numbering nearly 40, are not left behind.

“I want to give my barbers a good paying job,” Tony said. “So, I have the pay structure set up where my barbers get the majority of the money. I’m trying to build them up, too.”

Tony was heartened when his stepson, Montgomery, had listened to his numerous work stories and became interested in barbering. For the last eight months, he has followed an apprenticeship program to learn on the job.

“I didn’t realize how difficult haircuts were, and it gave me a whole new respect for what my father does in the business,” Montgomery said.

Initially, he mostly wanted to follow in the family business. “I started to notice how detail-oriented and how cool was it that haircut fashions changed over time, so it kind of intrigued my interest,” he said, adding “I’m enjoying it a lot.”

Details: executivemensgrooming.com