A young Elgin barber’s been making a name for himself for his skill with the scissors as much as for his talent with social media, chalking up online videos of his work that have scored as many as 40 million hits.
Using the handle “shortyblends,” Emilio Chavez specializes in transformative cuts in which the client goes from shaggy to GQ in one sitting.
The 22-year-old has been cutting hair since he was 16, when he decided he needed a fresh look and trimmed his own locks while a student at Elgin High School.
Friends took notice, and soon they were asking him to cut their hair as well, Chavez said.
His first foray into social media was a Facebook video he posted of him giving a haircut when he was 16. Two years later, he got his barber’s license, expanded his posts to include Instagram and started building a customer base, he said.
“Two years ago, around the time I started posting to TikTok, that’s when things started to blow up,” Chavez said.
Scrolling through his Instagram feed, Chavez shows one video with more than 40 millions views. Another scored 26 million views.
What really led to a jump in business were two clips from February 2023, which didn’t garner nearly as many hits but led to lots of business, Chavez said.
One featured a man with very long hair getting a much shorter cut. The other is of a man who came in with a receding hairline, cotton swab-like hair and scruffy beard and left with a smooth, close-shaved look.
“He went from looking like he was 60 to looking like he’s 30,” Chavez said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many men grew their hair out while they were working from home and couldn’t get to a barber or salon, he said. When they came in, they were looking to clean up their act, he said, and he was getting his first crack at working with long hair, which can be challenging.
“You have to dial in and be cautious with it,” Chavez said.
You end up relying on past experience, doing a little guesswork and figuring out what to do for the new style, he said. It can take two or three visits before the look is perfected.
It also helps that he has good skills with his iPhone 15, which he uses to shoot video while giving haircuts to those clients who allow him to do so. It takes anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to edit with the CapCut app, he said.
Those videos have been a great guerrilla marketing tool, he said.
In addition to having millions of views of his work, the videos have resulted in people flying in from as far away as Arizona and Texas for his services based on what they saw on social media, he said. Beyond that, the videos have been posted by others, helping grow their social media base as well.
Chavez had been working at In The Cut Hair Studios in downtown Elgin until January, when he and business partner Arnold Noraky opened their own shop, Ace Hair Studios, at 164 Division St.
“We felt it was time to branch out for ourselves,” he said.
With his online fame, Chavez can charge from $125 to $150 for a cut. He typically averages about 35 appointments a week, he said.
The way he sees it, haircuts are the male equivalent of makeup for women. Some women have told him he’s made their boyfriends better looking, he said.
“Getting clean cut makes you feel good, fresh and totally different,” Chavez said.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier News.
