Haircutter's Cut

Martin Cosgrave:
It may be true that everyone needs their hair cutting, but there's a limit to how often they want it done. So there's the problem, how do you sell more haircuts to the same people more often?

Marco:
You do get a few who cut their own hair but most people are just wired in to the whole capitalist industrialist complex. Hair styling's no different from any other industry, you know, we're all just cogs in a machine.

Martin Cosgrave:
So, I could just walk in to any barber myself and ask for a haircutter's cut?

Marco:
No, because you don't know the sign.

Martin Cosgrave:
There's a sign?

Marco:
Yeah.

Martin Cosgrave:
So could you tell me what it is?

Lecturer:
OK, so there are basically two ways of growing a business. First you can increase your market share, and secondly you can grow the market. A good company will try to do both. So for example, if you sell fizzy drinks, not only do you want to make people buy your sugar water instead of your competitors', you also want to make more people buy more sugar water year on year

Professor Jonathan Lucas:
The Haircutter's Cut was probably developed in Florence in the fifteenth century, although some scholars believe that its origins go further back, to the early Ottoman period.