CHAPTER 30:

THE PANDEMIC PART 2

I’ve never really been that keen on social media! Yes, I knew Facebook was our most successful form of advertising, I knew that Edward spent most of his time fiddling on his phone and was a legend in his own internet lunchtime, but it stopped there for me. That was until day 2 of our closure.

Edward had created a new platform called @alandlive and together with our Academies Principal Kevin, they quickly put together an on-line timetable of education, working out a series of 4 x 45 minute demonstrations every day. These would be carried out by our Training Team live on this thing called Instagram.

The initial timetable was to cover just 2 weeks from Monday 31^st March ‘20, because obviously no one knew at that time we would be in Lockdown 1 until July 4^th ‘20. They put together a WhatsApp group for the Team and Zoom meetings were arranged every morning and every evening to discuss the “Lives”. After some discussion, we felt that during this extremely tough time when we were able to use the technology we had, why should we charge anyone to watch? In fact, using the many social media hair groups to post our timetables on, we quickly built over 4,000 followers and in no time had a ready-made audience nationally and occasionally, internationally. Edward set me up with an account @alandbig and I was able to see what the Team were up to. What I saw made me really proud, particularly the lovely messages of support as the Team went live.

Yes, there were some teething problems; the internet kept dropping out, kids shouting, dogs barking and all sorts of odd background noises. Claudio, our Barbering trainer, locked his phone upside down and did one session on the ceiling! But this all helped to keep us sane. The audience was growing and the quality of the training improved hugely.

Edward was the delivery driver, ensuring the Team had the necessary equipment and products to hand and arranged to swap cut mannequin heads from Yaz (Head of Cutting) to Gitta (Head of Colouring) and vice versa. He also set up his interview show at 3.30pm every afternoon and got some great guests to appear, the good and the great of the Industry. Some of these interviews are still available on @alandhair under the Series “Edward Hemmings Meets & Live & 3.30pm”.

Within the first month of lockdown 1 we personally settled into a routine. Bonnie was recovering from a foot operation and the lockdown gave her the opportunity to literally put her feet up. For me it was an early morning walk getting the newspapers and then my phone went on to watch the Team running their education live on Instagram.