About United Kutz.
From running a barbershop out of his highschool locker room to owning two United Kutz locations in the London area (his second location on Trafalgar and Admiral), Kwami has always been in the business of bringing people together. “I wanted to open up something that I knew could bring the community together,” he says, “that is even why I called it United Kutz. I knew that even by cutting hair we could unite this community one haircut at a time”. Moving from Trinidad to Toronto at the age of 8, Kwami remembers going to get his hair cut with his mom only to realize they weren’t trained to cut Black hair. “I thought ‘How could someone live in Canada, call themselves a barber, and not be able to cut the hair of every Canadian?’ … That is what I am going to base my business on.”
Our Vision
United Kutz is built upon a vision of uniting the London community and motivating young people to do the same. Kwami feels he has successfully spread this through his platform. “You see the entire community everyday come through the barbershop; old white men in the morning talking about the war, business men on their way to the office, students from Western and Fanshawe, hockey moms, Black kids, women getting braids – you see the entire London community on a day to day basis. It is a reminder to me that I am doing the right thing”. Kwami wants young people to know that if you build something with the right attitude, it will be more than just a business. It will be a fraction of the community.
United Kutz a place you can call home.
Kwami doesn’t let customers feel like customers – he makes them feel like part of that community. “The way I created the shop, I want it to feel like a home. I chose red, white, and black because it represents Home. It’s the Raptors, its Canadian, its Trinidadian, its Fanshawe – it’s me in a nutshell and what I represent”. He believes it is important now more than ever that we show our strength as a city. “That is something huge, especially in Black culture, we always say ‘you gotta rep where you’re from’. You’re not nothing if you don’t have your city behind you,” Kwami says, “We gotta look out for each other – it has to be Forest City first.”