Football has always found its way into Hairbond.
Sometimes through an agent. Sometimes through a barber. Sometimes because a player was already using the product and somebody made an introduction.
And in 2014, it took us underground in Liverpool, beneath the red-brick arches of The Cavern, with Simon Mignolet in front of a camera and Hairbond in his hands.
I remember looking around and thinking:
How the hell did we get here?
Hairbond wasn’t a multinational grooming company.
We didn’t have fifty people in marketing or an agency arriving with mood boards, catering vans and somebody whose only job was to say content.
We were building.
And Simon helped us build.
Signing Simon Mignolet in 2014
At the start of 2014, we announced Simon as an official Hairbond ambassador.
He was playing for Liverpool and Belgium. Anfield was his workplace. International football was his other job.
For an independent British hair brand, that was a serious signing.
This was also a goalkeeper standing in one of the most scrutinised positions in English football.
Every save was examined.
Every goal conceded was replayed.
Goalkeepers don’t get the luxury of disappearing into midfield after a mistake.
Make ten saves and people talk about the striker.
Misjudge one cross and a bloke called Gaz has produced a 14-post tactical thread before you’ve reached the dressing room.
That was Simon’s world in 2014.
Yet when we dealt with him, there was no big-time behaviour.
He was straightforward, professional and helpful.
A genuinely good guy.
Why The Cavern?
We could have photographed Simon anywhere.
A studio would have been easier.
White wall. Lights. Product. Footballer.
Done.
Instead, we took Liverpool’s goalkeeper to The Cavern.
Because if you’re shooting a Liverpool player in Liverpool, why remove Liverpool from the photograph?
You go downstairs and the temperature changes.
There is that cool, slightly damp underground feel. Low red-brick arches sit above you. Neon catches the old masonry. Footsteps bounce. Voices carry.
Even before the music starts, the room seems to have an echo stored inside it.
The Beatles played there.
Liverpool’s music culture grew around it.
History doesn’t hang politely on the wall.
It is the wall.
That felt right for Hairbond.
Hairbond didn’t need fake heritage
Brands have a funny habit of inventing history.
Black-and-white photograph.
Victorian-looking bloke.
EST. 2023.
Job done.
Hairbond didn’t need it.
We had come through salons and barbershops. Footballers were genuinely using the products. The company was already exporting internationally.
The Cavern gave us another real piece of culture to put into that story.
Liverpool.
Football.
Music.
Style.
Hairbond.
No fake bricks required.
Simon made the shoot easy
Footballers are funny commercially.
You can book the name.
You cannot always book the personality.
Some turn up, fulfil the contract, take the photograph and leave.
Simon wasn’t like that.
He gave us his time.
He worked with us.
He understood that for Hairbond this wasn’t simply another entry in somebody’s diary.
For him, it was one shoot in 2014.
For me, it was a chance to move Hairbond another few yards down the pitch.
He didn’t behave as though he was doing the little company a favour.
Although, in reality, he was.
I haven’t forgotten that.
Then the pictures left The Cavern
The photographs weren’t supposed to live on a hard drive.
They went into the trade.
Into the Hairbond world.
Into barbershops.
Poster imagery appeared around mirrors and products. Barbers recognised Simon immediately. Customers sitting in the chair recognised Liverpool’s goalkeeper staring back at them.
That mattered.
Suddenly the conversation became shorter.
A shop owner didn’t need ten minutes of sales patter explaining whether Hairbond was serious.
There was a Premier League goalkeeper representing it.
Simon Mignolet. Liverpool FC. Hairbond.
For a growing independent company in 2014, that sent a message.
We weren’t a kitchen-table experiment hoping somebody might buy a tub.
We were building a proper brand.
And barbers noticed.
Some stocked us.
Customers picked the products up.
Other footballers saw Hairbond.
Another conversation started.
Then another.
That’s how it spread.
That’s the real value of credibility
Marketing people like numbers.
Reach.
Impressions.
Engagement.
Conversion.
Useful.
But independent businesses also trade in something harder to measure:
belief.
Does the barber believe customers will buy it?
Does the distributor believe you’re going somewhere?
Does the customer believe your product belongs beside the established names?
Simon gave Hairbond some of his credibility at exactly the point when credibility mattered.
It shortened the journey from:
“Who are these?”
to:
“I’ve seen Hairbond.”
That is enormously valuable when you’re building.
Football and hair always belonged together
George Best.
Kevin Keegan.
David Beckham.
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Footballers have never just worn hairstyles.
Sometimes they distribute them.
One player changes his haircut on Saturday and by Tuesday thousands of barbers are looking at the photograph.
Football is culture.
Hair is culture.
The connection was always there.
Hairbond didn’t invent it.
We understood it.
2014 was a different marketing world
This is worth remembering.
Instagram existed.
Twitter mattered.
But footballers hadn’t yet become the full-scale personal media companies they are today.
No endless Reels.
No TikTok production schedule.
No commercial team demanding fourteen vertical edits before somebody can eat lunch.
A campaign still had a very physical life.
You did the shoot.
Printed the imagery.
Put it into salons and barbershops.
Someone saw it while getting their hair cut.
The barber talked about it.
The customer picked up the product.
That was the funnel.
Primitive times.
Somehow civilisation survived.
Simon fitted Hairbond
There was another reason the partnership worked.
Simon wasn’t a circus.
He was a serious professional in an unforgiving position.
Liverpool’s goalkeeper gets analysed differently from most footballers.
There is nowhere to hide.
Simon lived inside that pressure.
Yet the man I dealt with was calm and decent.
You meet enough people in football and eventually the badge stops impressing you.
The salary stops impressing you.
What remains is how somebody behaves when they don’t need anything from you.
Simon treated us well.
That’s what I remember.
He helped me
I want to say this plainly.
Simon Mignolet helped me.
He helped Hairbond.
In 2014, when we were still earning our place, he gave the brand some of his name, time and credibility.
That mattered.
Business has a bad habit of rewriting its early years after success arrives.
Suddenly every decision was strategic.
Everyone knew exactly what they were doing.
Every campaign was inevitable.
Bollocks.
Businesses are normally built through hundreds of smaller acts of faith.
A barber gives you shelf space.
A distributor takes a chance.
Someone makes an introduction.
A photographer gets the shot.
A footballer says yes.
One thing connects to another.
Then another.
Eventually somebody calls it momentum.
The Matchmaker bit
Looking back, this was probably what I had always done.
Connecting things.
Hairbond and football.
Football and fashion.
A Liverpool goalkeeper and The Cavern.
A famous player and an independent British brand that needed people to look twice.
That’s why Matchmaker stuck.
I wasn’t interested in putting a logo somewhere simply because we could buy the space.
I wanted the pieces to belong together.
In 2014 they did.
Liverpool. Mignolet. Cavern. Hairbond.
Four words.
You can almost see the photograph already.
That’s branding.
More than twelve years later
It’s strange writing about that shoot now.
2014 to 2026.
Twelve years.
Simon carried on with a remarkable career.
Liverpool carried on.
Hairbond carried on.
The products evolved.
Football changed.
Marketing changed beyond recognition.
But I still remember that day underground in Liverpool.
The brick.
The lights.
The camera.
Simon being easy company.
And the feeling that Hairbond had just become slightly more real.
Those moments are difficult to recognise while you’re living them.
You’re normally too busy trying to pay for the next one.
Years later, you understand what they meant.
Thanks, Simon
Brands spend plenty of time congratulating themselves.
Founders aren’t exactly innocent either.
So this one is about giving some credit back.
In 2014, Simon Mignolet was good to me.
He gave us his time.
He gave Hairbond credibility when credibility mattered.
The photographs went out into barbershops.
People noticed.
Some stocked us.
Some bought us.
Other players saw us.
The ball moved forward.
And twelve years later, I haven’t forgotten who helped kick it.
Thanks, Simon.
You were part of the Hairbond story in 2014.
You still are.
Hairbond Journal — From the Archive
The products matter. The people matter more.