With salons tightly closed in the pandemic invoked restrictions, men’s grooming has not been in good condition since the spring closure. DIY hair is not successful for everyone. Yet one Hollywood star has proved that even in a global pandemic, bad hair is not the great equaliser we hoped it would be.
The Secret Sauce
George Clooney, a 59-year-old actor and human rights activist, admitted that he successfully trimmed his hair at home using a machine called Flowbee. “My hair is really like straw, so it’s easy,” he told CBS Sunday Morning.
According to Clooney, the most sexy man who ever lived as per People magazine, a $ 139.95 (£ 103) contraption has been used by him for over 20 years now – not just in 2020. “My hair takes two minutes,” he says. , adding that the speed and performance gave him time to clean the garage doors, scrub the floor and do most of the family washing while locked in their home in Los Angeles.
Flowbee
Flowbee was a clear product of the 1980’s infomercial boom in the US. It was created in 1988 by Rick Hunts, a San Diego carpenter who was inspired to invent the product after using his industrial vacuum cleaner to absorb dust from his hair. Hunting originally built and sold a gadget in his garage. But it was a live show at a local show that was heading in the direction of success, before global fame hit it off, in the form of very late-night TV shows. In 2010, more than two million Americans bought one.
In fact clippers with different lengths of “spacers” and a suction tube, whose longevity is partly theatrical level – according to various online studies, “up and down movement moves forward” – and standing within a popular tradition. Flowbee was featured in the 90s sitcoms Party of Five and Home Improvement, and was one of the many branded products in the film Wayne’s World, in which the word ‘suck cut’ was coined. It also helps that the product is almost hard to forget.
Google searches for Flowbee took off following Clooney’s weekend admission and the Flowbee website itself crashed. But while his endorsement will no doubt lend invaluable celebrity cachet to the brand’s image, largely unchanged since the 1980s, the Clooney effect is not in fact responsible for the product’s pandemic-era success.
As early as March, Flowbee had sold it on the Walmart website and on Amazon. It is not available in the UK and, according to Fortune magazine, Amazon says it does not know when this item will return to stock. The UK saw a similar issue when in April, John Lewis encountered a 200% increase in demand for clippers, and cosmetic tools from Philips and Remington sold. All of those products, however, are now available. According to its website, Flowbee does not exist. Hunters, who show the actual model on the website, could not be reached for comment.
