Work Barbershop

Copperline Barbers

A two-chair barbershop with a six-day wait and a booking system made of missed calls.

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Client
Copperline Barbers
Trade
Barbershop
Place
Chicago, IL
Year
2025
On the order
Web design & build · Online booking · Gift cards
Runs on
Astro · Squire booking · Stripe gift cards
The takeaway
No-shows down by half with deposit-backed booking

The brief

Dre and Marcus cut hair with a waitlist most restaurants would envy — managed entirely through voicemail and a spiral notebook. Every missed call was a missed cut, and no-shows were eating one afternoon a week between them. They didn’t want an app. They wanted the notebook, but smarter.

The look

Oxblood leather, brushed copper, hot towels. The site is dark, warm and unhurried, with rays fanning off the wordmark like a barber-pole spin flattened onto paper. Their chairs — both inherited, both older than the barbers — got the portrait treatment usually reserved for founders.

The build

Booking is the whole site, so it opens on the two chairs and their real availability. A small card deposit holds the slot and rolls into the price of the cut — polite to regulars, ruinous to ghosts. Gift cards sell through the same flow, which quietly turned December into their biggest month ever.

The result

No-shows fell by about half in the first quarter, which handed each barber back most of an afternoon a week. The spiral notebook survives — it holds sketches of fades now, not phone numbers.

Next door Hearth & Crumb Neighbourhood bakery · Portland, OR