New breed of specialty barbers focusing on beards

Natalie Anderson lights up as two former neighbors, Paul and Kristoffer Neumann, step into her newly opened barbershop for the first time.

Anderson runs to greet the men, who drove an hour to Beardsgaard Barbers, a three-month-old shop in the Chicago suburb of Batavia that specializes in styling and maintenance of beards.

'I've had a beard most of my adult life, I've been growing this one for three years,” said Paul Neumann, eager to get his feathery 8-inch beard trimmed. 'Natalie's admired my beard since way back when.”

Once known as the beard specialist at a barbershop where she previously worked, Anderson massages some Santa Claus-inspired beard oil - with strong notes of balsam fir, peppermint and pipe tobacco - into Kristoffer Neumann's beard, molding his wiry hairs in place. She then takes a fine-tooth comb and glides it along his jaw line, defining the beard's angles.

It's a craft that is increasingly in demand as facial hair and longer beards grow in popularity, industry experts say.

Providing an additional service for beard-styling makes sense, since beards can be 'as big as a head of hair,” said Charles Kirkpatrick, executive director of the National Association of Barber Boards of America.

While large beards have grown in and out of fashion for centuries, Kirkpatrick said the beard-care industry has boomed in the last few years as they have become trendy. Barbers have learned to style and shape them while more beard products are coming on the market, he said.

The name 'Beardsgaard” itself stems from what sounded like the place Vikings would go to get their beards trimmed, said co-owner Tyler Anderson, Natalie's husband. Beardsgaard embodies the old-fashioned style of a 1900s barbershop, but adds a dash of what the owners call their own 'nordic and nerdy” fandom.

The shop specializes in beard trimming and maintenance, with services like quick beard trims, beard cleanups and 'beard overhauls,” which include deep conditioning, facial hair design, dramatic reshaping and beard blowouts. Owners serve about 25 customers each day, and more than half are bearded.

Beardsgaard's vast shop features an entire children's play area, run and maintained by Tyler's 6-year-old daughter, Morgan. The shop tries to cater to children too, and Tyler Anderson had 7-year-old Chase Devine sit in a 1900s barber chair and get a side-swept bangs cut.

'We know how hard it is to get kids to cut their hair, make them feel comfortable,” Tyler said.