How Me Again is Redefining Hair Loss Services
After more than 30 years in hairdressing, Conrad Blandford could see the warning signs long before many others.
Having built successful salons in Sheffield over three decades, he watched an industry that had once enjoyed healthy margins become squeezed from every direction. Rising overheads, staffing pressures and changing customer habits were making the traditional salon model increasingly difficult to sustain.
Rather than accepting decline, Blandford asked a different question: what if the future of hairdressing lay beyond haircuts?
That question became the foundation of Me Again, the Sheffield business he co-founded with internationally renowned hair specialist Laurent Berquet and former City Taxis owner Arnie Singh. Combining a traditional salon with advanced hair loss services, the business has developed a model that not only fills a gap in the market but is already preparing for national expansion.
Just over two years after launching, specialist hair loss treatments now account for around half of the company's turnover.
"We've all seen what has happened to hairdressing over the past few years," says Blandford. "When I started, salons could make 25 to 30% profit on their turnover. Over time, the costs of products, staffing, business rates and running the business have all increased, but customers haven't necessarily got more money in their pockets. You can't simply keep putting prices up."
The result has been an industry under enormous pressure.
"There are salons closing every day. Businesses have had to reduce apprenticeships, cut reception staff and strip costs out wherever they can. It's become much harder to run a profitable salon."
For Blandford, the answer wasn't simply to work harder. It was to rethink the business entirely.
Looking Beyond Hairdressing
Rather than looking at what other salons were doing, Blandford found inspiration elsewhere.
"I started looking at businesses like opticians and dentists," he explains. "Opticians don't just test your eyes. They offer a range of glasses, sunglasses and specialist services. Dentistry has evolved in exactly the same way. Hairdressing hadn't really done that."
Historically, traditional salons and hair loss specialists had existed as two completely separate industries.
"If someone lost their hair through illness or another condition, they'd often end up visiting a wig shop, which felt completely separate from a salon environment. We thought, why shouldn't those services sit together?"
That thinking led to Me Again, where clients receive everything from traditional hairdressing through to advanced hair replacement systems, scalp analysis, referrals for hair transplants and bespoke solutions for conditions including alopecia, burns, scarring, hormone imbalances, eating disorders and cancer related hair loss.
Around 40% of the company's specialist work is linked to people affected by cancer treatment, with many clients referred after chemotherapy or surgery.
The expertise behind the business is equally distinctive. Blandford's decades of experience are complemented by Laurent Berquet, who trained at the renowned Dessange salons in Paris before spending almost three decades working internationally with Hairdreams. Having transformed clients everywhere from the Cannes Film Festival to editorial shoots, films and catwalk shows, Berquet now applies that expertise to helping people living with hair loss regain their confidence.
Removing the Stigma
Blandford believes attitudes towards hair loss are changing rapidly.
"There used to be a lot of stigma attached to wigs or hair replacement. Now people are much more open about cosmetic procedures in general. Men openly talk about travelling to Turkey for hair transplants. People are much more comfortable investing in themselves."
Technology has also transformed what is possible.
"The old perception of a wig isn't really what we do anymore. Modern systems are incredibly sophisticated. Sometimes it's a full system, sometimes it's a small bespoke piece to cover a scar or an area where hair simply won't grow back."
The salon now sees around 150 specialist consultations every month.
For many clients, the emotional impact is just as significant as the physical transformation.
"We kept hearing people say the same thing at the end of their appointment: 'I feel like me again.'
"That's actually where the business name came from. It wasn't something we invented. It came from our clients."
A Better Business Model
While the work is personally rewarding, it also creates a more resilient business.
Traditional salon appointments have become increasingly spread out.
"When I first started hairdressing, clients might visit every four or five weeks," Blandford explains. "Now, because of colour techniques like balayage, many people only come every 10 or 12 weeks."
Hair replacement services create a very different relationship.
"Clients come back every month. Their systems need maintaining, adjusting or replacing. It creates consistent, recurring revenue rather than relying on appointments becoming further and further apart."
That recurring income has helped transform the business.
Hair loss services have grown from around 15% of turnover to approximately 50% in just over two years.
"It's become a much bigger part of what we do, and the market is huge."
Building Something Bigger
Although Me Again is still refining its Sheffield operation, the long term ambition stretches far beyond one location.
Blandford believes there is an opportunity to create the UK's first recognised national hair loss brand.
"There isn't really a Vision Express for hair loss," he says. "There are wig companies, transplant clinics and specialists doing individual parts of it, but nobody has really brought everything together under one brand."
The business is now completing the groundwork needed before expansion begins, most likely in early 2027. That includes trademarking the brand, developing training systems, building relationships with private healthcare providers and creating the operational framework that will allow other salons to adopt the model.
Rather than opening company owned branches from scratch, Blandford sees existing salons as the key to growth.
"We don't want to replace hairdressers. We need them.
"Our plan is to work with established salons, helping them add these specialist services alongside their existing business. They're already trusted businesses in their communities. We simply expand what they're able to offer."
The Lipstick Effect
For Blandford, the journey hasn't been about abandoning hairdressing. It's been about evolving it.
He describes the business as responding to both commercial realities and changing customer needs.
One idea he often returns to is the "lipstick effect", the economic theory that during tougher financial periods, people continue spending on smaller purchases that improve how they feel about themselves.
"People might delay buying a new car or moving house," he says. "But if something is affecting their confidence every time they look in the mirror, they'll often invest in fixing that."
That combination of commercial resilience and meaningful impact is what continues to drive the business.
By bringing together traditional hairdressing, specialist hair replacement and healthcare partnerships under one roof, Me Again has created a model he believes could be replicated across the UK.
"We're still refining it," he says. "This year is about getting everything exactly right. Next year is when we'd like to start expanding.
"If we can help more salons survive while helping more people regain their confidence, then that's something worth building."
You’ll find Me Again on Ecclesall Road and online. Call 0114 266 6646.
