My name is Michael Tominay, my shop is Boris & Co. we are based in Leeds, West Yorkshire.
I have been cutting hair for the past 12 years now. I started off as a Saturday boy in a local hairdressers, as soon as I could enrol at college, I did and I started with ladies hair.
I got introduced to a friend, Josh through another friend, we weren't at the same college but had similar interests, also when we were 16 he had his own place so we had somewhere to hang out, at the time he worked a job that required him to be constantly well groomed and he asked me if I could cut his hair, since I was training in ladies, I thought how hard can it be? So I started cutting Josh's hair, that quickly turned into cutting another four or five lads hair who happened to be there. Quite quickly I realised this is where my passion lay.
The crazy thing is, the 'model' who I won the British Master Barber competition with is the same Josh, who actually quit his job in November 2018 to become my shop manager. For us both this is a culmination of hard-work and friendship, it's amazing to be rewarded for this.
My future plans are to open a second shop, I have just started work on it and should hopefully have it open by November. This will be my second shop in 4 years which I am over the moon with and already cannot wait to open a third.
Winning BMB has meant to me, recognition, it has always been my goal to be someone who is spoken of highly in the barbering world, I have been perfecting my craft for over a decade now and I haven't put in all this time and effort to not be successful, it's a hard thing to measure is success but gaining accolades such as this feel like the right milestones. To be rewarded for my passion is indescribable, being a barber doesn't feel like work to me, it feels like I'm fulfilling what I was born to do. I don't plan to slow down or stop until I have the biggest and best chain of barbershops in the U.K and every one of my staff members are award winning barbers also.
