Long Lunch With Rodney Wayne – The full Transcript!

This was quite a different challenge for our industry editor. Gone was the illusion of chatting safely with a friend over lunch, this time we were pulling out the big guns. The result surprised everyone – including Gene Cooksley himself. He turned up to lunch a sceptic and left with stars in his eyes.

Well perhaps that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. But he did tell our editor afterwards he wanted to be Rodney when he grew up [and I have the tape to prove it – ed]. Despite the age difference, Wayne drank Cooksley under the table in a four-hour marathon interview. We’ve pulled out the most interesting parts to share with you, and as per usual we’ve left them in the order they were discussed, so apologies in advance for any confusion.

To see more of the pics from their lunch go to the gallery. 

How much of an introduction does Rodney Wayne need? Forty-two years in the business, 41 branded franchises nationwide, a chain of hair product retail shops and he’s about to start up a new chain aimed at the lower end of the price range. He’s also brought Richard Kavanagh on board as the brand’s creative director, passing the torch, so to speak.

GC: So Richard’s like the old fashion art director?

RW: Yeah. It’s exactly the same only what we’ve tried to do is a little more of what Gucci did with Tom Ford. Let’s just say that Rodney’s going to step aside a little now. Even though we’ve had the style director involved we’ve not really promoted that person or that face so we are going to do that now and Richard will get very much more involved with day to day training with stylists.

GC: We all love Uncle Richard and he’s certainly not backwards about coming forwards.

RW: He ain’t. I’ve known him for many years but we’ve never really done anything and I have a good respect for him and he does for me, so I think it’s going to be a good one.

GC: As long as you are strong enough to put yourself to one side and you get the chance to build the equivalent of a fashion house.

RW: That’s what we want to do. Richard Smith is the chairman of Rodney Wayne and also Karen Walker and he’s had a lot of experience. He started MOJOs here but he’s mainly been in the rag trade in Australia with Sheridan fabrics. His feeling is that fashion and the business of fashion has to be global now. People identify with something that’s global and whereas we clip and snip away in our world. Sure we get the looks and we know what’s going on but never really bothered connecting ourselves globally.

GC: A lot of people have come and gone and you’ve managed to just truck on through. Is there a reason why you are still here and these blokes aren’t?

RW: There were many times that I thought I’m going to have a go at the hospitality industry or go and do something else and then I d sit down and think why would I go and do that when I know so much about this industry and nothing is going to be any easier. Running a restaurant has staff problems just like running a hair salon.

GC: Imagine having perishables. It’s bad enough when you over-order, imagine if the stuff went off.

RW: Exactly. The one thing I did very well was that I took that couple of years – I call it my sabbatical – when I bought a farm up north and I committed myself for every Wednesday afternoon but that’s all I did. Roy Douglas was running the show and so I’d have the afternoon with them and then go back to farm the goats and work with the boatbuilders on my boat in the shed. I had a total change and I still realised after a couple of years that I didn’t want to be a farmer even though I’d loved the outdoors and having the change but I love people and I love the city and I came back and I did feel really refreshed.

Look at Richard Branson (who’s one of my heroes) – he can still have a board meeting lying in his hammock in the Virgin Islands. I’ve sat in a boardroom if I’m there but I’ve never really had a “Rodney’s office”. I have an open door policy and I’m happy to talk to anyone. If I don’t want to talk to them I’m happy to tell them to piss off and leave me alone. I have a fantastic life where Ill be at work at 9 am if there is a meeting and it’s necessary but I don’t want to have my first meeting before 10 ‘o’ clock. I’d hate sitting in an office all day long.

We brought Julie [Evans] over from the UK and we placed her in the South Island as a support manager but she also bought a Rodney Wayne salon and did really well then sold it. We’ve now supported her as General Manager and she has taken a lot of my work. We do a lot of communication work with front floor managers, we do two conferences a year now. Some of the owners joined me 20 years ago and they are still there but they have nothing to do with opening the door of the shop each day

GC: So you grew up in Motueka …

RW: Yes Motueka. I did my full apprenticeship as a butcher in Nelson. A guy working for my father on the orchard arrived in the coolest Zephyr 6 mark 1 convertible – red and cream with white walled tyres – and he was a butcher and he came down to just do a season.

I got the best customer training in a butcher shop because I worked in one where you cut every cut in front of sir and madam and so you didn’t have to read manuals about customer service it was just being trained into you every day. When I first went to Australia I still worked as a butcher but I knew I was not going to stay in that.

GC: So are we talking School C?

RW: No I left school the day I was 15. My old man taught me to knock on doors – back then it was no good looking in the newspapers. I lived in a boarding house in Nelson with 6-10 boarders, most of them guys. You were given a roster for when you were allowed to use the bathroom, whether you had a bath in the morning or in the evening … It was tough. When you work in a butcher shop you’re up starting work at 5 or 6 in the morning, you wouldn’t have too many nights out

GC: So why Aussie, did you go after a girl?

RW: I was married then and we went back because she was an Aussie. That was probably how I got into hairdressing because she was a hairdresser but had not been hairdressing in a while. So I went though the Davines school of hairdressing and at night I worked in a very famous restaurant called the Bullfrog. This business was run more like a family than a business, I was made to feel like family every time I went there and that was another great lesson that I got. It didn’t have to be hard to create a beautiful family atmosphere.

Over there they would drive from the little towns to Melbourne to have a haircut so I decided I would make the coolest hairdressing salon in Shepperton, and it was an enormous success. That was more than 40 years ago.

When I first started at the hairdressing school we were still using long scissors, then Sassoon came out and we all went to smaller scissors and did precision haircuts. It was a most exciting time in the industry and fortunately I had made enough money then for me to go to London every year. A lot of my week was taken up with training training training and it just took off. Everything was cash back then, no credit cards or eftpos

GC: Why did you leave Australia if it was going so good?

RW: Because I was in the south of France swimming in the salt water and I thought what the hell am I doing living in central Victoria? We very nearly went to Sydney but I didn’t like Sydney. The children were 9 and 12 and I thought I would love to be over here closer to my family. We came here in a week when the sky was blue every day and we stayed up at the Hyatt, and I went to see Cut Above in Lorne Street and realised there was a market here.

I knew I could put together a system that could manage a chain so it wasn’t by accident that we planned to do one shop in the city and insisted it be a billboard site. It took me 12 months to get in there, just waiting to get the right site. I had no income whatsoever, we were living on savings and we had bought the biggest and most beautiful house in Takapuna. I was getting worried.

I got a group of very good people and I set up a school on the first floor and that’s where we trained them. We used to have 1500 students up there at any one time. There were no subsidies, everyone was paying out of their own pocket. For six months it was something like $3500. The idea was that we were grabbing all the good people to go into our own salons.

GC: When you turned up from Aussie you obviously hadn’t lived in Auckland before?

RW: No, I’d only been to Auckland once in my life.

GC: How many porsches did you go through?

RW: Just two. I raced one of them a few times. I brought over a Morgan Roadster Australia and I raced that.

GC: I hear that you are a bit of a crap fisherman.

RW: Yeah I’m a hopeless fisherman. I’m no good at sitting with a fishing line, I’d sooner go diving or kayaking.

GC: Did you always have franchising in mind? Keeping so many managers and salons must have been difficult.

RW: I went to Paris to have a look at the system and decided this is it. In Australia all the franchises are obviously aimed at the low end of the market. In Europe they are all in the mid to upper end of the market. I went to a New York salon and there were six receptionists.

I hired a research company to research the brand name Rodney Wayne and they went to Manukau City where we didn’t even have a shop and they stood at the door and asked which hairdresser comes to mind. We had about a 78-80 per cent recall. We couldn’t believe it, they couldn’t believe it.

GC: Wayne is not your birth surname is it?

RW: No but Rodney Cheeseman hairdressing doesn’t really have the right ring. I changed my name by deedpoll years ago.

GC: Why Wayne?

RW: Well John Wayne was one of the best known actors of the time and Rodney Wayne was easy to say. The children and grandchildren are Cheeseman.

GC: How long since you did a full day or week of hair?

RW: 15 years ago.

GC: Do you still look at hair when you are out and think ‘Ooh I could make that better’ or has that gone?

RW: It’s probably gone but I can still see, love and admire good fashion and good hair. I still get it when I’m at a party and women will come up to me and ask ‘now Rodney what shall I do with my hair?’

GC: The bit I really got wrong was the strength of the brand.

RW: In New Zealand the Rodney Wayne brand is a household name now and 80 per cent of our owners here are non-hairdressers and I think that’s been a success because they are watching the figures. Look at the hospitality industry – there is not one restaurant where they allow the chef to say where to seat guests. The front person here is going to run the restaurant, they are going to choose the flowers, the music, the lighting and everything that goes on and so I decided that I was going to split the management: the floor manager was going to be like the chef, responsible for the standard and the quality of the hairdressing and the front manager would do the rest. Each one had their role, now they have to work together and that’s been the biggest challenge because sometimes one doesn’t get on with the other.

It took me 12 months to get that first site and then I bought that big house without even knowing about franchises, I just knew I was going to build a chain. I sat and wrote a manual from how I wanted the telephone answered to how I wanted the client walked to the chair, how long it would take, everything that would happen. So I’d written this whole manual and I went and had it printed and no one had ever seen anything like that in the industry before. Today that manual, even though it’s been rewritten three or four times by professionals, still sounds like it’s coming from me.

Just because you have a name doesn’t mean you can franchise it, it needs a system that is so methodical that anyone can understand it and that’s why it worked so well for non-hairdressers.

GC: What’s your view on competitions?

RW: I’ve never been a great supporter of competitions. One of my first jobs was with a salon call Nicoles of Italy and they used to win all the competitions in Melbourne and their arrogance to their customers and among themselves just taught me very quickly that I will never build a business if I have an attitude like that.

GC: Is there anyone else in the country whose work you’ve watched and really like? People who have run a good shop?

RW: Derek (Elvy) – he’s always done great work, he’s a very nice guy and he’s an interesting character. I think this industry is unique and different to any other is that there are people you have huge admiration for and really like. We’re an industry where we are very happy to share, very friendly, cooperative, helpful and fun.

GC: What are you proudest of?

RW: I’m very happy that I can have my own time now. That I can afford to do what I love for my beautiful wife and go away on the boat. I have surrounded myself with some very good people who love the brand and are as proud of it as I am and they look after it as well as I do. I can’t ask for any more than that.