It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Abiran Thevarajah was stuck at home. There was nowhere to go and not much to do.
So, like many, Thevarajah decided to start a new hobby. He thought he may as well learn to cut his own hair, and it would help him in the long run because he wouldn’t have to pay for a barber. And because he couldn’t go out, nobody would see him if he messed up the style at first.
He found a YouTube tutorial and started snipping.
After giving himself his third haircut, Thevarajah felt pretty confident in his new-found craft. So he offered his services to two friends.
“I messed both of them up,” he says now with a laugh. “Both of their parents said, ‘Don’t come back.’”
But Thevarajah kept practicing. As lockdowns lifted and Thevarajah made his way through the rest of high school, his skills improved. He started charging, just $10 for a cut.
Six years later, Thevarajah now owns Crown & Clippers Barbershop, which has reached a five-star rating and become the most-rated barbershop on Google in the borough since opening in September 2025.
But the 22-year-old prides himself on more than just the hair cuts — he says the shop is about fostering community for clients and creating entrepreneurship opportunities for young people facing a bleak job market.
“There’s so many other paths, and I feel like a lot of people should have been told that in high school,” Thevarajah said. He wishes he was.
Launching a career
Cutting hair wasn’t initially a career Thevarajah envisioned for himself. He enrolled in university to pursue a business degree, but dropped out four months later after realizing it wasn’t the right fit.
He still wanted to run a business, but knew he needed to make some money. So he turned back to cutting hair.
At 19, Thevarajah got a job at a Scarborough barbershop, where he worked for two years and helped grow the business by doing job interviews and designing a website. He eventually saved up enough to buy half of the shop, but when that deal fell through, Thevarajah decided to go it alone.
Two months later, he opened Crown & Clippers in the area of Finch Avenue East and Kennedy Road.
“I didn’t even know what I was doing, for the most part,” he said.
He assembled tables by hand, took appointments, and ran the marketing and accounting.
Now 22, Thevarajah employs seven barbers and two braiders in a shop with dark walls and bright ring lights hanging above cushioned barber chairs.
The shop made about $46,000 in revenue in September, he said, and it has a five-star Google rating with more than 1,600 reviews.
“It was a dream scenario,” he said.
A path for others to follow
Thevarajah is already onto his next goal. He expects to open a second shop in North York this spring, and then a total of 10 locations by his 28th birthday.
The plan is to partner with the barbers working for him. They would open a shop together, he said, so the barber learns to manage their own place while Thevarajah provides accounting help, “brand power” and other business support.
It sounds like a good plan to several barbers at Crown & Clippers. Like Thevarajah, they’re in their early 20s and looking to manage their own businesses.
“We know in the future that this is going to pay us off,” Najim Mahmud, 22, said of working at the shop. Mahmud used to think cutting hair was the peak of a barber’s career, but he now hopes to manage his own shop in the coming years because of what he’s learned from Thevarajah.
“He isn’t just thinking about his future, he’s thinking about everybody’s future,” Mahmud said.
Thevarajah says it’s important to him that the barbers he works with know they can be entrepreneurs, especially because young people may not know all the options available to them in a tough job market.
“I want my barbers to feel motivated … when they come to work, just knowing they have a path,” he said.
Community, ‘not just business’
Upon entering Crown & Clippers, clients are greeted by the buzz of razors and conversation, and the steady beat of music pumping from speakers.
On late on a Friday afternoon, about 20 people fill the space: some sitting in the eight barber chairs, and a few playing a soccer video game on a wall-mounted TV.
The barbers are friendly with customers and each other. Several of them, including Mahmud, have been working at the shop since it opened and knew each other from high school or previous jobs.
“It’s not just business,” Mahmud said. “People are just laughing, talking about the same thing.”
He’s cutting the hair of Seniya Sinhara, 20, who has been his client since the two were teens. “He was one of my guinea pigs, back in the day.”
“It’s about the loyalty, right?” Sinhara said. He started coming to Crown & Clippers for Mahmud, and now the shop’s younger crowd and casual vibe has drawn him into visiting for fun some evenings.
“I feel like I built a lot of friendships coming here,” he said.
Another dedicated customer is Dahom Allala, 23, whose barber Dahom Noor is also a long-time friend and a reason to spend time at the shop even when Allala doesn’t have an appointment.
“If he ever has free time, I might try to pull up,” Allala said. “You know, try to support each other.”
“Some days it doesn’t even fees like work,” Noor said. “I just feel like I’m hanging out with friends.”
