Barber Enny Buono lived in his home town of Naples until three years ago. He didn't know anything about Ireland but found himself watching Jim Sheridan's movie The Boxer on TV one night.
Not long after, he watched In the Name of the Father, another Sheridan movie starring Daniel Day Lewis. He had repainted his Naples' barber shop green, white and orange and, when Googling Ireland, discovered that this was the colour of the Irish flag.
"I was reading a book by Oscar Wilde, I found myself in an Irish pub – and I said 'Ireland is calling me'."
Soon after deciding that all these coincidences were a sign, he decided to come to Ireland. That is how Buono finds himself one of the success stories of Dublin’s “men’s groom boom”, less than a year after opening his smart barbershop, Barbiere, on Dublin’s hip Camden Street. It is a good story that he tells with the enthusiasm that has been key to that success.
Buono (37) is a fourth generation barber who first worked in his father’s barber shop in Naples when he was just eight.
He left school at 12½ to work there full time, married at 20, has two teenage daughters. “I had a flat, normal life, but here I find a new dimension; I developed a different side of me – it’s an energy I find in Ireland.”
He researched job opportunities and quickly found work with a barbershop at Grand Canal Dock. His wife thought he was crazy but after a few months, his family moved to join him. “I built up friendships with clients, that’s what happens in Naples, and after 18 months, began to think about opening my own business.”
He walked all over Dublin, from Francis Street to Drumcondra to Camden Street, looking for the right place for his new business: a businessman client who had become a friend was advising him.
They spotted a shuttered premises sandwiched between a halal shop and a pork butcher hear the top of Camden Street, but it wasn’t for rent. His friends asked the butcher about the building, found out he owned it and, after over a year of negotiations, Buono signed a 10-year lease.
His landlord, Paddy, “who’s nearly 80, is a real Dublin guy. It was a deal done on the shake of a hand.”
Interior designer Bill Simpson, a friend of a friend, worked on Barbiere's smart design, where bare brick contrasts with vivid orange-painted walls – and eye-catchingly, an orange Vespa motor scooter hanging from the wall. "A few of us sat down to develop it, to reflect my Neapolitanity."
He financed the business, opening Barbiere in February this year, with help from a business partner and with savings, resisting advice to borrow money. Fitting it out cost about €120,000 and rates are about €4,000 a year. He now employs four people – two Irishmen, a Romanian and an Italian.
For Buono, getting the right staff with the right attitude is key to business success. His own warm, ebullient welcome for customers is undoubtedly why he built up a loyal following in the first place.
“When people come in I grab them, I look after them. If we’re going to retain a customer, we give him the haircut he wants. Our client becomes one of our family, it’s how it is in Italy.” It’s the same for staff. “I say if we make this work, it’s for all of us. Working here, it’s not just a job, they have to put a bit of passion into it.
“I say ‘what do you want?, say, ‘show me an actor, a footballer’, then I say, ‘I can or can’t do this’. I give customers what they want.
“Before, men who wanted that kind of service had to go to a high-end hairdresser. And in our shop, we don’t do one style, we do everything, long hair, short hair, colour. My notion is simple: the client is king.”
He hopes to open another shop in about four months and eventually, more. “I deserve to have a chain, that’s my mission.”
