Sara Smith, owner of the Perry Barber Shop at 1220 Willis Ave., celebrates her first anniversary of business in downtown Perry Friday, and the year in Perry has been a good one for the independent entrepreneur.
“I feel like I’ve always been a part of the community,” Smith said. “Customers seem to really like their haircuts, the experience, the availability six days a week. Sometimes on Saturdays there’s no place to sit.”
To mark the anniversary, customers can enjoy barber pole-themes sugar cookies, baked by Rhonda Strough of Sin Sational Sweets.
Smith moved to Perry six weeks after opening her shop, finding a place in close proximity to work for her and to school for 14-year-old Holden Smith, now a freshman at Perry High School.
“I can’t remember my life before coming to Perry,” Sara Smith said. “It’s a wonderful feeling.”
After cutting hair in her Knoxville shop from 2006 to 2016, Smith moved to Des Moines in order to be closer to her family and church, but she still longed for the scale of small-town commerce, and that’s when she “looked at Perry and fell in love with Perry,” she said.
Smith can be found cutting hair for walk-in customers every day but Sunday in her shop at 1220 Willis Ave. The phone number is 515-238-7807.
Sara is such a wonderful and talented barber and even a better person. So glad I found her, and I can’t go anywhere else for a cut ! Not many barbers out there can do a good flat top, and she nails it every time.