Historic Barber Mafia shop moves to new, larger building

A historic Lovell business has a new location, but the proud tradition continues with the move of the Barber Mafia barber shop west on Main Street.

After operating at 218 East Main for many years, owner Kurt Wheeler and his associate Jacob Newman moved the venerable barber shop to 63 East Main, renting from Jacob’s father, Tom Newman, next to Tom’s State Farm Insurance agency.

The duo made the move over the weekend of August 1-2 and opened at the new location on Monday, Aug. 3.

Wheeler moved to Lovell nearly 14 years ago when the newly minted barber heard from his grandfather, Doug Savage Sr., that Clyde Drain was retiring after operating Clipper Clyde’s barber shop for more than 30 years at 218 East Main.

Wheeler opened Kurt’s Cuts in November of 2012 after attending the Academy of Nails, Skin and Hair, where he worked 1,500 hours in training for nearly a year. He graduated in 2011 and moved to Lovell with wife Tammy the following year.

He noted that, because he took over the hair cutting location nearly seamlessly, the shop was “grandfathered in” by the state barber board when the building otherwise would have required some modifications and upgrades.

Wheeler gradually started selling products at the shop, in part to help contribute to community fundraisers. He sold soap, shampoo, shaving products, hair styling products and now beard products.

As Kurt’s Cuts gained more and more customers, Wheeler realized he could use an associate, and in perfect time, Newman came on board. Newman earned his hair-cutting degree from the Paul Mitchell Academy in Logan, Utah, and joined with Wheeler in 2024.

“I have known Jacob for a while,” Wheeler said. “I knew him through high school. He’d come in and get haircuts. I’ve always been impressed with the type of person he is, and he’s always shown a great interest in barbering, and I’m just thrilled that he joined up with us.”

Within a few weeks of Newman’s arrival, the shop was rebranded as Barber Mafia in June of 2024, taking advantage of a story that gangsters Pretty Boy Floyd and Machine Gun Kelly stopped by the shop in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Wheeler and Newman are proud of the history of the barber shop. They trace the first barbershop to 1901, though the first documented barber was Fred Ostler in 1906, the year Lovell was incorporated. Reed Tippetts started his barber career in the 1930s, running the shop and adding partner Henry Kocherhans in the 1940s. The two ran the barber shop into the 1980s, when Drain opened his shop.

For many years the shop was located next to Lovell Drug at the location of a billiards hall and bar, each bearing the name Palace, but it was consumed in a fire that struck the block. The Palace had as many as four barbers cutting hair at one time, Wheeler and Newman said.

The shop moved one block east following the fire, where it operated as the Metropole Barber Shop, then Clipper Clyde’s, Kurt’s Cuts and Barber Mafia. It remained at 218 East Main until last week.

A needed move

As business grew, Kurt’s Cuts and Barber Mafia needed much more room, the barbers agreed, and they started looking around town for a bigger building.

“We got pretty crowded in the old barber shop,” Wheeler said. “One day we had 17 people in there at once and had standing room only.”

With the move, Barber Mafia went from 600 square feet to 1,700 square feet, Wheeler said, with room to add perhaps another barber and with plenty of space for customers and products. The building also allows the pair to have a laboratory of sorts where they make their own product – shampoo, conditioner, sea salt spray and styling powder.

“We wanted to have a location on site where we could have a functional laboratory, for lack of a better word, somewhere where we can make the product, package it and label it,” Newman said. “We’d like to eventually distribute it and have some online sales where we can sell to other barber shops and direct to consumers. And so not only did this building give us more space for customers waiting, it’s going to allow us to have that space to create and distribute our own product. I’d say those are the biggest motivators. We just wanted a little more space.”

“Monday of last week was our official start date,” Wheeler noted. “We weren’t quite sure when we’d be able to open up, because there was just so much to do. But we had a lot of volunteers help us, and we were able to start up.”

Wheeler and Newman said their new building had been remodeled around 20 years ago and didn’t need any major work. They removed one wall to open it up and add space, did some painting and refinished the floor.

“It feels really awesome to have people say, ‘It looks so good driving past it. It looks so good from the street,’” Newman said. “It feels good to get compliments like ‘It looks really good. It’s so cool to see a building like that getting utilized.’ I think it’s just cool to kind of feel like we’re contributing to the aesthetics of the town. That’s a cool feeling.”