Dick Blanchett is a loyal customer. For 82 years, he’s frequented the same barbershop in Timaru, ever since his first haircut at the age of four.
Known as Murray’s Barbershop & Beauty Salon today, the 96-year-old business has been in the Gibson family since Ernie Gibson, a Gallipoli veteran, founded it in 1929.
Blanchett can still recall his first mop chop as a preschooler.
“In those days, they didn’t have electric shavers; they were manual clippers, the old hand clippers,” he recalled.
“They cut some hair and pulled a lot out. It wasn’t a happy day.”
When Seven Sharp visited, former owner Murray Gibson, who retired 13 years ago, was enticed to pick up the scissors and give Blanchett his regular trim, for old time’s sake.
As the pair chatted about tomatoes and old times, a steady stream of customers entered and exited. Among them was Robert, who said he’d been a customer for 30 years.
What keeps him coming back? “The price.”
Currently, a men’s cut costs around $30, but Blanchett remembers when schoolboy trims were a shilling.
When Blanchett visited the barbershop as a child, soon after losing his mother, owner Ernie Gibson told him to keep his shilling, a gesture he has never forgotten.
“A shilling in the ’40s was big money to a 10-year-old kid. I had that shilling for a week and never forgot that moment of kindness. I remember it like it was yesterday. It really affected me.
“That shilling gave the Gibsons 80 years of loyalty.”
Murray remembered his grandfather as a kind gentleman who had been wounded in the First World War and returned to Timaru to establish a taxi business.
“As the Depression came on, he realised that nobody’s going to want a taxi anymore, so he looked around for what else there was and picked up on the barbershop.”
The store also stocks die-cast model cars and tobacco, though the latter is no longer the big seller it once was.
Murray said the business had to diversify when it failed to secure a Lotto agency, despite being the top seller of Golden Kiwi tickets in the South Island.
The business has moved premises three times in a century but has always remained on Church St.
Hairstylist – or “hairapist”, as she calls herself – Kerri Chambers said when the country came out of the Covid lockdown in 2021, the customer queue went around the corner.
“I think we did 200 haircuts the first day we were back, between us all. It was insane. We were missed!”
Murray’s son Geoff is now in charge and manages a diverse team of barbers and stylists.
“Everyone’s got their talents,” he said.
Both men agree that they’ve seen many style fads over the years; many fashioned on sporting stars, from All Blacks to Indian cricketers.
“That’s what the kids love. Mullets are in style with a lot of kids at the moment.”
Blanchett reckoned his style hasn’t changed much over the years.
As payment for the latest tidy-up, he handed Murray a shiny 1947 shilling — not the original Blanchett was told to keep, but one very similar.
And, just as his grandfather did, Murray handed the coin back.
