The cut-and-dried redemption of James Mac
Eight years ago, James Mac came to Thailand with a vision. He was greeted with a slap in the face.
From being deceived to just plain disrespected, he describes his journey to success in the City of Angels as simply “painful.”
First, he says he got conned into working for a Thai family that was bringing in hair products from abroad. Convinced they had a solid vision for creating a quality hair academy, he went to work for them.
He ended up being everything from a hairdresser to a receptionist to a cleaner.
"The owners didn't really care about the business at the end of the day," Mac says, adding that they gave him very little rewards in return. Mac says he felt the owners took advantage of his passion.
It got worse. Mac, together with partner Justin, decided to open their own salon after coming to a verbal agreement with the owner of an apartment building. Nothing was written on paper.
After they'd finished renovating and decorating the space, the owner of the building evicted the pair.
After seeing the great job that Mac and Justin had done with the space, "he wanted to keep it for himself," says Mac.
“I was being nice and passive until one day I just said, ‘It’s time to wake up.’ Nothing is impossible,” recalls Mac, who says these experiences taught him valuable lessons about business. “I was put in a situation to never to trust anyone again.”
Despite these disappointments, Mac and Justin didn't give up on their vision: to build a salon with the intention of making the customer’s visit an experience rather than a task.
The pair wanted to get away from the conveyer belt style of salons in which hairdressers rush between several customers, creating an impersonal feeling.
Pay attention!
“A customer should feel it’s all about them. We want to give them the chance to sit in a chair and turn the world off,” says Mac, who developed this vision after working in Los Angeles salons, which encouraged the very feeling he wanted to avoid.
While Mac was cutting hair in another salon, Justin was searching for a new salon space in Bangkok’s city center. With many leaving town due to political upheaval, he believed it was the perfect time to score a bargain.
So he walked the streets of war-torn Bangkok until he finally found a place.
Today the pair's passion is evident in the James Mac salon, which reflects an urban loft-like set up with cozy chairs and a bar with flashing lights that soon will offer cocktails made by Justin, who was a professional bartender for several years.
Check out photos of the duo and their salon below the contact details.
