“My uncle Jim, he let me cut his hair, ... and I just took a chunk out, right in front where everybody could see it. I was 7 or 8,” she said.
After the death of her mother in 2007, she decided to get her cosmetology license. Years later, she decided to open her own place, Reunion Barbershop. The name came from being inspired while driving through Colorado, where she saw a sign that said “reunion” and liked the sound of it for her business, she said.
Gibbs opened the shop just before the pandemic began in late February 2020 in the former 3 Kings Barbershop location on Anderson Mill Road. Reunion offers hair-cutting services for all hair types as well as scalp treatments, braids and beard treatments.
“It’s a very progressive but old-school barbershop because ... everybody here uses the straight razor; everybody can get a head shave or a face shave,” she said.
She said her goal is to provide an inclusive space where any customer can feel comfortable and not awkwardly sit in the chair.
“I love that we can be a place where people feel safe to be themselves to get the haircuts they want to get, ... [such as] women with shaved heads or women that are cutting their hair short, and they’re scared because people will think X, Y or Z,” Gibbs said.
Gibbs also has further entrepreneurial ambitions and would love to create a new type of workspace where people can have a work-life balance. She said she would also like to grow the Reunion brand by possibly adding another barbershop as well as a coffee shop.
“I think 2020 really proved to people that life’s so short,” she said. “We need to have that work-life balance. We don’t need to be working ... 24/7 to survive.”
Reunion Barbershop
9112 Anderson Mill Road, Ste. A600, Austin
512-520-5269
www.reunionbarbershop.com
Hours: Mon. and Sat. 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Tue., Wed., Fri. 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thu. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Sun.
