A good conversation with his customers and giving a makeover, that is what attracts hairdresser Temesgen Kahsu to the hairdressing profession. The 21-year-old Coevorde resident is an emerging talent. He won a major hairdressing prize at the BarberSociety Live event last year and is now going viral on TikTok.
Kahsu is from Eritrea and has lived in the Netherlands since he was 13. Thanks to his father, he came up with the idea of becoming a hairdresser. “He was just in the Netherlands and one day he asked me if I wanted to cut his hair. Even though I didn’t know how to do it, I did it anyway and that’s where everything started.” Nowadays Kahsu can be found in the Straq hair salon in Coevorden, where the doors are packed.
With his golden hair clippers, Kahsu has already created many ‘tight haircuts’, as he calls them. He has had a passion for the profession for years and that only increased when he won the national hairdressing award last year. “As a result, I was suddenly picked up by the media and received much more attention, it even resulted in additional customers,” Kahsu says proudly.
And those customers don’t all live nearby. Some people have to travel an hour and a half for a new haircut through Kahsu. “A boy from Enschede had heard about me somewhere. He is also from Eritrea and came to Coevorden especially for me.” That felt surreal for Kahsu: “It’s bizarre that people travel so far for me, but I treat them extra well. This also makes me more confident and then I feel good.”
The hairdresser has been regularly recognized since he started a successful TikTok account. “I just film exactly what I do during a haircut. On some videos I even have more than 100,000 views, which goes very quickly.” The videos are popular with the audience. The most special guest he received in the chair was the mayor of Coevorden. “I really enjoyed the fact that he even came to me to get a haircut.”
Kahsu hopes his career will continue to grow. The mayor is step 1, but in the future he has set his sights on cutting professional football players. And not the professional football players in the Netherlands, but worldwide. “I would really like to cut football players and then travel with them, that is my big dream.”
But for now the hairdresser has not yet been developed in Coevorden. He can spend the prize of 300 euros he has won on various courses. “There is always something to learn in hairdressing, so I will continue to gain additional experience here first.”
Kapsalon Straq cannot yet say goodbye to the spontaneous and cheerful Kahsu, so he hopes that he will continue to work at the company for years to come. “We’ll see what the future brings,” he says with a grin.