MILLCREEK, Utah — Tucked behind a pediatric dental office just off 3300 South is a 20-foot shipping container that Steven “Flaco” Fernandez has turned into something much bigger than its footprint.
It is his barbershop, his growing business and, beginning next month, his full-time career.
“I just feel so happy with what I’m doing now,” Fernandez said.
The 26-year-old’s idea for the unconventional shop reaches back to his childhood in El Salvador, where he remembers getting his own hair cut inside a small wooden shack.
Years later, after becoming a barber in Utah, Fernandez found himself thinking about that small shop and what it represented.
“You truly don’t need, like, a big space to cut hair or make it personal,” he said.
Fernandez came to the United States from El Salvador when he was 10. He said his mother worked two jobs while building a new life for them in the U.S., an example he credits with shaping his own work ethic.
Starting small
Fernandez has been cutting hair for less than three years. Just months after barber school, he decided to take an unusual chance on a business of his own.
His first shop was an 8-by-10-foot shipping container that he rented month to month. He outfitted the small space as a one-chair barbershop and began trying to build a clientele.
It was not an immediate success.
“There was like two weeks where I didn’t have any clients,” Fernandez recalled. “I was going to give up and have them pick it up and just, you know, go work for somebody else again.”
He had already contacted the company that owned the container and was prepared to have it hauled away.
Then the following week, Fernandez cut hair for 13 clients.
At the time, he said, that felt like a breakthrough. He decided to keep going.
Over time, more customers began filling his chair, and the original container became too small. Fernandez eventually saved enough money to purchase a 20-foot shipping container of his own and turn it into the current version of The Cut Box.
The shop is compact but designed like a traditional barber studio, with a barber chair, mirrors and the tools of his trade packed into the narrow space. Fernandez said he has worked to make the unconventional setting feel personal and welcoming.
Customers keep coming back
Ryan Robison first found Fernandez through his son, who can be particularly sensitive to noise during haircuts.
“My son actually came here first, and he’s not the easiest to cut for, just between noise and stuff like that tends to bother him,” Robison said. “And he did a really good job with my son. So, I tried it out and it’s been perfect every time. So, I keep coming back.”
That repeat business is now changing Fernandez’s life.
While building The Cut Box, Fernandez has continued working another job as a pediatric dental assistant at the office just across the parking lot.
He has spent years balancing the two — working at the dental office while fitting barber appointments around that schedule.
That ends Oct. 1.
Fernandez said he has now built enough clientele to leave the dental office and become a full-time barber.
“I can finally just put all my efforts into something that I built from the ground up,” he said.
His wife, Sarah Fernandez, said she has watched that determination from the beginning.
“He dreams big,” she said. “He dreams big, but he makes those dreams happen.”
A work ethic learned from his mother
Fernandez said that drive is rooted in the sacrifices he watched his mother make after bringing him to the United States.
He said the two arrived when he was 10 and neither spoke English at the time. His mother had to learn a new language while working two jobs to support them and give her son opportunities she hoped would lead to something more.
Now, as his own business reaches a turning point, Fernandez said that history is never far from his mind.
“I just wanna basically make her proud for bringing me here and also giving me the opportunity,” he said.
Thinking beyond one box
Going full time is not the end of Fernandez’s plans.
He hopes eventually to expand The Cut Box concept, creating additional shipping-container barbershops that other young barbers could operate themselves.
Fernandez said barber school taught him how to cut hair, but much of what he knows about attracting clients and running a business came through trial and error. He wants to help future barbers learn those lessons earlier.
His vision is for each container to become a small business of its own — potentially carrying the individual barber’s name while operating under the broader Cut Box concept.
Fernandez also hopes to eventually earn an instructor’s license so he can help teach younger barbers both the craft and the business behind it.
It is an ambitious next step for an idea Fernandez once came close to abandoning.
A few years ago, he was waiting for enough people to walk into his tiny rented container to justify keeping it.
Now, he has enough customers to leave his second job and is thinking about how the business he built could give someone else a place to start.
