Five Brothers, One Chair: Inside Birmingham's Ethridge Family Barbershop

The short answer: In Birmingham, a barbershop that started with two brothers cutting hair in 1970 is still being run by the same family more than half a century later, with sons now working the chairs their father once swept as a kid.

What Happened

Before Willie Ethridge Jr. ever picked up a pair of clippers, he was pushing a broom. As a boy, he and his brother would head downtown on weekends to sweep floors and run errands at the family shop, long before either of them sat in a barber chair themselves.

That shop traces back to 1970, when it was opened by two family members working side by side. 'My father started the shop in 1970,' Ethridge said. 'My father and my uncles. My uncle Joe and my father started our first shop in 1970.'

What started as a two-man operation didn't stay small for long. What began with two family members eventually became a tradition shared by much of the family, five of Ethridge's father's six brothers became barbers. That's not a shop with one barber passing down a trade to one son. That's an entire family tree built around the chair.

Today, the story has come full circle: from a father and his brothers opening a barbershop in 1970 to sons working beside their father today, the Ethridge family's story is about more than haircuts, it's about service, community and the lessons passed down from one generation to the next.

Why It Matters

Barbershops close. Leases end, owners retire, buildings change hands. A shop that has kept the same family behind the chair for more than 50 years isn't just a nice anniversary story, it's a rare survival story, and one worth paying attention to.

What makes the Ethridge story stand out isn't just longevity. It's the sheer number of family members who went into the trade. Five brothers becoming barbers under one father's example says something about how the shop functioned less like a single business and more like an informal training ground.

Industry Impact

This is a live demonstration of something the barbering industry talks about constantly but rarely gets to see documented over five decades: apprenticeship that happens organically, inside a family, before it ever becomes a license or a diploma.

Ethridge didn't start in barber school. He started sweeping hair off a floor, watching how his father and uncles talked to customers, built regulars, and ran a chair day after day. That kind of exposure, years of osmosis before ever touching clippers, is the kind of foundation barber schools try to replicate with mentorship hours and shadowing requirements, but rarely with this much time behind it.

For shop owners thinking about succession, this is also a case study in what actually transfers a business across generations: not just a chair and a lease, but a reputation and a set of customer relationships built over 50-plus years.

Lessons for Barbers and Shop Owners

• Start mentorship early, even informally. The Ethridge family's next generation wasn't recruited as adults, they grew up in the shop. If you want a shop to outlast you, exposure has to start well before someone's behind the chair.
• Document your shop's history now. A story like this only works because someone can still say exactly when the doors opened and who opened them. Don't let your own shop's founding story live only in memory.
• Treat family labor like real training, not just chores. Sweeping floors and running errands sounds minor, but it's how trust, work ethic, and shop culture get absorbed before the technical skills ever come into play.
• A multi-generational shop is a marketing asset. Longevity and family continuity are exactly the kind of local-trust signals that bring in customers who want a barber they can rely on for decades, not just a quick cut.

Related Reading

Birmingham has other shops with deep family and neighborhood roots, and we'll be looking into their histories in future coverage. If your shop has a documented multi-generational story, we'd like to hear about it, especially how you've handled succession planning and mentorship as the business passed between generations.