NZhairdressers

Born into the trade: Toni Mascolo, 66, still cuts hair on Saturdays for his long-standing clients, charging 61 Pounds for Women and 51 for Men. The rest of the week he runs his 8,000-employee Tony and Guy firm. Toni Mascolo has built a single London salon into one of the world's biggest hairdressing chains. But will he ever pass Toni & Guy on to his children?..

The man is a babe-magnet. "Hi, Toni," shout the gorgeous women in Toni Mascolo's hairdressing academy as we walk up the stairs. They turn and wave in ranks from the lines of chairs where exhibition cuts are being demonstrated.

Then a glamourpuss all in black bursts through the door to give him an excited fashion kiss -mwah, mwah. They hug. She towers above him. Mascolo gives her a gravelly-voiced pep talk, ending with something like "We're gonna make lotsa money."They laugh.

Blimey. Mascolo is 66 years old, not much over 5ft2in tall, and shiny bald, so he clearly has something -that something being Toni & Guy, probably the world's biggest high-street hairdresser brand, and one of the most enduring family firms. He is,in short, Britain's king of hairdressers.

Family firms are hard enough to hold together at the best of times, so let's tug a forelock to Mascolo and his four brothers, three of whom oversee Toni & Guy in America. The British and American divisions demerged six years ago but the brothers still co-ordinate the brand between them.

As for Italian-born Toni, his empire grows by the year, across Europe into the Far East and Australia. He has also steered his Toni & Guy salons, ubiquitous on most high streets, through three economic downturns. Whatever's coming next in Britain, he is confident he can cope.

"I tella my staff," says Mascolo, in his sing-song, Neapolitan cockney, "it's no good cheapen price, you must deliver quality and best possible service, treat everyone like the best guest, and work longer and 'arder. If people gonna spend money, they gonna spend it with a strong brand, where they know there is quality."

And if it gets really bad -maybe they will do days with a 50% discount for the jobless. That's his wife's idea, he says. And he beams contentedly.

Tomorrow, Mascolo visits the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to pick up an OBE. That's to add to the Cavaliere Ufficiale -Italian knighthood -he was awarded in 2006. It is a rare foray into the spotlight for a modest entrepreneur who has built up a Pounds 220m fortune from his London base.

And he makes his success sound so easy. Mascolo says he grew his empire because it was a way of keeping everyone together. He opened his first salon with brother Gaetano (Guy) in south London's Clapham in 1963, after his hairdresser father brought the family to Britain.

Now he has nearly 300 salons here -giving him twice as many sites as his nearest competitor -and more abroad.

Then there's his spin-off firms: hairdressing products, furniture, design, IT systems, opticians, the Caffe Fratelli coffee bar chain. He even set up another hairdressing chain, Essensuals, downmarket of Toni & Guy, to soak up demand and snatch prime retail sites.

He is self-taught at business, left school at 16, and just sniffs out these opportunities. As we climb the stairs at his hairdressing academy in London's New Oxford Street, he tells me at length what a great property coup it was, converting the building.

Mascolo can't stop creating businesses. And not just for his grown-up children -two of whom already run parts of the operation -but for all his employees. "I like to look after my staff, treat everyone as family," he says.

Like much of what Mascolo says, it masks a harder-nosed truth. He hated losing people he had trained to rivals or start-ups, so he expanded Toni & Guy by franchising or joint venture. He also kept it mid-market, eschewing the style of celebrity crimpers like Nicky Clarke and Vidal Sassoon. He is a very flexible and determined entrepreneur.

And a devout one. He is a Catholic who has built his own chapel next to his mansion in Surrey, and counts cardinals and bishops among his many friends. He also supports children's charities in Italy and a transplant ward at King's College Hospital in London. Mascolo has paid his dues.

But there have long been rumours in the hairdressing trade that Toni and his brothers are not a happy bunch -hence the departure of three of them to America. Mascolo just shrugs it off. "We work for each other, we help each other, we motivate each other," he says, summarising the family values. And it is, his daughter Sacha tells me later with a sigh, a very gossipy trade.

Finally, sitting in the studio at the top of his hairdressing academy, Mascolo settles himself down. Jacket off, pin-neat in his shirt, tie and diamond cufflinks, he looks boyish and oddly vulnerable. Then he starts chatting genially with an ease that comes from decades spent, scissors in hands, talking about anything and everything to customers.

He still cuts hair on Saturdays for his long-standing clients,Pounds 51 for men, Pounds 61 for women. Then he rolls off the names of his regulars: chief executive of this, director of that. He needs to keep cutting, he says, because it enables him to test his own products.  On other days he just runs his 8,000- employee operation.

The big steps his business has made -into London's Mayfair, into other countries, launching product lines -have all been logical progressions, he says. He learnt early to concentrate on education, keeping staff motivated, and not to rely on debt.

"I think I make a lot of mistakes, but every time I learn something -and I try not to make big mistakes."

He also doesn't bear grudges. He recently rescued his main franchisee in Ireland after the franchisee's operation hit financial difficulties and came close to bankruptcy. "He made a mistake. He's gone back to the salons, now working hard. We sent our people to sort it out." And he says it with a gruff shrug as if it is only a minor irritant.

No prizes for guessing his favourite film is The Godfather. An intense code of loyalty to family and team infuses his management style to the core.

Longstanding advisers describe him as one of a kind. "For Toni there's no real difference between business, family and pleasure," says Andy Butterworth, tax partner at BDO Hayward. "What's unusual is his flexibility, especially in franchising. Pretty much each deal is negotiated on an individual basis."

Then there are the myriad other businesses he spins off Consequently, says Butterworth, the company chart is "a bit of a spider's web" with Mascolo crouched at the centre. Much of it wouldn't sit smoothly inside a publicly-quoted outfit.

Mascolo deals with so much personally -all the shop managers have his mobile number, everyone in the firm knows him as Toni, senior managers have to drag him away from chatting to staff during site visits.

For them, Mascolo is the example of what can be achieved: all are hairdressers, all have come up through his academies. Mascolo knows it. "Our motto is education, team work, then motivation and communication," he says.

Has he been to business school? "No," he grins, "but I have sent others." He says he is just following the family line. His father and grandfather were all barbers in the small town of Scafati, near Pompeii. His father ran a thriving hairdressing business, and had married well. "A Gallo, a well-to-do family."

But his dad wanted more than southern Italy could offer, and followed a friend's advice to work in London. He brought his family over in 1956. Mascolo, then 14, the eldest of five brothers, was sent to school in Clerkenwell. By 16 he had left, unable to master English properly, and was working with his father in Mayfair salons.

"And I still can't speak English without an accent," he laughs. All his brothers can. Mascolo was just too busy getting on to bother.

His memories of those early years are peppered with fond anecdotes of celebrities whose hair he cut: footballers, film stars. He is so upbeat and gentle that you can see why employees hug him.

Beneath, he must be much tougher. He says he started the first Toni & Guy with his brother after their mother died, tragically, aged 44, following a kidney operation. His father was devastated. The new salon, and the ones that followed, allowed the family to come together. Different brothers were given their own sites. Father helped. The holding company was called Mascolo and Sons.

"All the way along it's been a family thing," says Mascolo, then he points upwards and smiles. "My mother up there probably helped us." He married one of the workers from that first shop. He and his brothers expanded the chain carefully and were millionaires by the 1990s, moving the brand abroad.

They had false starts in America and Italy, but recovered. The Mascolo method is never give up, just dust yourself down, and give it another go in a different way. But the toughest problems for any family firm are embracing the ambitions of siblings and passing control to the next generation.

Mascolo has given three of his brothers -Bruno, Gaetano and Anthony -the American operation. A fifth brother Andrea works with him in Britain. And Mascolo's son Christian now runs Essensuals here, while his daughter Sacha Mascolo-Tarbuck (she married Jimmy Tarbuck's son) is global creative director, responsible for its Label.m haircare range and more.

A second son, Pierre, is a film producer. So when will Mascolo hand over the reins? He shrugs and bobs his bald head this way and that. Don't his kids ask? "Yeah, my daughter asks, and I ask her 'what you wanna do?' She says 'don't sell, we like the brand.' And anyway, what would I do with the money?"

There were rumours that he was looking for a trade sale. "The press made that up," says Mascolo. "The only possibility would be to allow the public to buy in, but I don't see how that would help." Sacha says she expects her father to take more of a chairman's role.

It will be hard, she adds, to operate without him. It's also hard to get out of a long chat with her father. Two hours in and he's still going -he could talk for Italy and Britain combined.

Does he have any ambitions left to fulfil? "As an Italian, I always wanted a nice restaurant," he says, mournfully. He almost got one in Holborn in the 1990s, before he was trumped for the site by All Bar One. He was going to call it Mascolo's. Something simple, he says, pasta and pizza.

You could imagine him as the padrone, pottering round with the limoncello, pinning guests down for a long chat. One for his children to think about for Christmas, maybe...

VITAL STATISTICS

• Born: May 6, 1942
• Marital status: married, with three children
• School: Italian School, Clerkenwell, London
• First job: hairdresser in Mayfair
• Pay: about Pounds 150,000 in salary plus dividends. His family wealth is estimated at Pounds 220m
• Homes: Knightsbridge, Dorking and Sorrento
• Car: black BMW X5
• Favourite book: At First Sight by Stephen J Cannell
• Film: The Godfather -"but I also love Kidulthood and Adulthood, the films produced by my son Pierre Mascolo"
• Music: anything sung by Luciano Pavarotti
• Last holiday: cruise from Southampton to Venice

WORKING DAY

THE Toni & Guy founder awakes at his house outside Dorking, Surrey, at 7am. Toni Mascolo will take the train into London, arriving at Toni & Guy's Doughty Street head office before 11am."I usually have meetings with franchisees, or take reports from accounts and HR.

I'll also go with agents to see properties. I always like to see sites. I saw the first few in Australia and Italy and Japan. Location is very important. I also spend time with the product company, the furniture department, the warehouse - I go to every level."

Mascolo still cuts hair one day a week, either Saturday in his Sloane Square branch or on Thursday in Davies Street. "I get paid for doing something I enjoy. Ridiculous." He usually leaves for home by 6.30pm.

DOWNTIME

TONI MASCOLO relaxes by going to watch football. He used to be a Spurs supporter, but now has a season ticket at Chelsea. "First row, middle section, just behind the manager Scolari, great seat. But I still follow Tottenham. I am upset for them."

He also likes clay-pigeon shooting and walking. He has recently bought a villa in Italy. "I have been looking for a house near Sorrento for nearly 10 years. This house has the most amazing view over the Bay of Naples. On New Year's Eve it all lights up with millions of fireworks."