From beaches to basketball courts: ITE dropout, 17, cuts hair around S’pore for up to S$2,000 a week

By Neo Jia Yu, Shayna Choo Si Na, Lorraine Lee Zhixuan, and Miasara Bite Mohamad Norfitri

From HDB void decks to basketball courts, Ezekiel Ong travels all over Singapore to cut people’s hair.

The 17-year-old started his own hair-cutting business, EZcuts, after he got a haircut so bad that he decided to do it himself.

“I told them to cut like less than 2cm off, cause like that it'd be just nice,” he recalled.

“But he cut just above my eyebrows. It was really short. It was like a bowl cut, but very short.”

Just to see if he could, he tried cutting his own hair. It turned out better than he’d expected, and he began practicing on his friends as well.

While it started out “for fun”, he quickly realised he could make a living out of it.

Unlike your typical hair salon, where barbers are based in a single location, Ong makes around S$1,000 to S$2,000 a week cutting people’s hair at random places all around the island.

But it hasn’t been the easiest journey.

The youth dropped out of the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) to pursue his passion, and was even kicked out of the house at one point.

Started as a hobby

For Ong, cutting hair was never meant to be a business.

In June 2023, he began learning how to cut hair from YouTube. He spent his mealtimes watching haircut tutorials, and even practised his newfound techniques on himself.

Wanting to take things a step further, he managed to persuade a few of his friends to sacrifice their hair for more practice.

It didn’t always go right. He recalled a time where he messed up really badly while practising on one of his friends.

Midway through the haircut, he accidentally shaved too much off the side of his friend’s head.

“When he looked in the mirror, [he said] ‘EZ what happened?’,” he recounted. (The friend eventually decided to get his entire head shaved bald.)

Ong also struggled with self-confidence. When he first started, he’d compare his own “not nice” haircuts with the ones he saw on TikTok.

But he kept practising, and gradually began to see progress.

It soon became a full-fledged business. Today, Ong has over 4,300 Instagram and 3,700 TikTok followers.

He also has about 2,600 customers on his Telegram business channel, where clients book his haircut slots.

Asked about his advice for fellow novices, he said: “Just keep cutting lah.”

“Just keep cutting and slowly you’ll see improvement, especially when your client gives feedback.”

“haircuts hmu”

Three months after holding a pair of hair cutting shears for the first time, Ong uploaded a video on his Instagram and TikTok.

“haircuts hmu (hit me up),” he wrote in the caption. The video, which showcased before and after haircuts of his past clients, marked the start of his roving business, which he named after himself: EZCuts.

As he posted more of these videos, complemented by his comedic editing and captions, people began reaching out to him for haircuts, which he priced at a nominal sum of S$5.

“I just…cut and post, cut and post, cut and post,” he said.

Cayleb Abinaya Lazarusli, 16, is one customer who initially found out about EZcuts through social media.

He praised Ong and his style of cutting as “consistent”. “[He] gives you exactly what you want,” he added.

GV Vengadesh, 16, is another customer who considers Ong his “personal barber”.

“Whatever you want, he'll do it for you. But he won't [just] say yes to everything. He'll give you tips on what looks nice, what doesn't look nice,” Vengadesh said.

Through his social media accounts and word of mouth, Ong’s skills have become fairly well-known through the hair-cutting community.

Moonshee Ismail, 54, director of Hair Mafia & Co. BARBER Academy Singapore, said he saw Ong’s work on TikTok and was impressed with his technique.

“For a self-taught barber, his work is well executed,” he said.

Moonshee also pointed out that cutting hair in a non-air-conditioned environment also comes with its own challenges.

Loose hair might get stuck onto the body due to perspiration in the heat, for instance — an issue that Ong solves with snake powder, which also helps ward off mosquitoes.

But Moonshee acknowledged that the discomfort would also affect Ong himself as he served his customers.

“To operate in an open-air environment, it truly shows his dedication,” said Moonshee.

High and lows

Having professionally cut hair for just over a year now, Ong has garnered a combined online following of over 10,000 people.

But his dedication to his own business came at a personal cost: dropping out of ITE West, and formal education altogether.

As he spent more of his time cutting hair, he began spending less time in school.

Eventually, his school called his father, informing him that Ong’s attendance was very low.

His father then gave him an ultimatum: continue his education in cybersecurity, or drop out of school.

When Ong chose the latter, his father kicked him out of the house for abandoning his studies.

For around a month in March 2024, Ong lived off the money he got from his business.

He’d shower in ActiveSG gym showers instead of at home, and described his day-to-day routine as: “sleep, wake up, and go cut hair”.

Eventually, Ong managed to talk things out with his father and “settle things” before moving back into the house.

His father now knows that he is a barber and “doesn’t stop” him, he added.

Ong wouldn’t have done it any other way, though. “No regrets…I’d rather make money than waste time,” he said.

“I don’t [want to] waste time doing nothing in school and failing.”

He also cautioned those hoping to follow in his footsteps, however, saying that leaving school has to be done for a reason.

“Don’t rot outside, like, don’t sleep everyday,” he said.

But for those with a plan for what they want to do outside of formal education, he said: “Just do it.”

Never in one place

Due to high customer demand, Ong’s initial price of S$5 per haircut has increased — in small increments — to S$25 as of December 2024.

“When you’re high in demand and there’s only one of me, it’s very hard to supply everybody. That’s why I want to increase the price so that I get customers who understand what they are paying for,” he said.

But while his prices have become more mainstream, the service he provides is not: Ong still travels anywhere, at any time, to cut his clients’ hair.

While he’s cut hair everywhere from HDB staircases to basketball courts, the most outlandish place he remembers cutting a client’s hair was on a stationary kiddy ride at a shopping centre at 10pm.

They arranged to do it there as it was near the client’s house, he recalled.

“I just had to find a place for my client to sit down. So I was looking around and then I was like, ‘Ok sit there.’ And he was like, ‘Are you serious?’. And I was like ‘Yeah.’”

Ong acknowledged that he wouldn’t have been allowed in the mall, but explained that he didn’t see an issue with it, as he’d always clean up the mess and not cause any disturbance.

“[But in the end] security chased us out of the mall,” he said.

On another occasion, a client called him at 2am, asking him to travel from Tiong Bahru to Ang Mo Kio to cut his hair.

“[The customer said], ‘Bro I forgot I got prom, can you come to Ang Mo Kio?’ And I was like…what?” Ong recalled.

But he still took the client up on his offer.

Accompanied by a friend, he travelled all the way to Ang Mo Kio in the dead of night, charging just an extra $10 for the commute and the hour.

Asked if it was tiring to be travelling all over Singapore every week — usually via public transport — Ong said: “It’s quite normal already, if you do it for a long time.”

More than his haircuts

While he makes a decent living with his haircuts, it’s not the money itself that’s most important to Ong.

“It’s more like [I’ve proved] to myself that you don’t need a diploma or anything to earn this amount,” he explained.

Ong doesn’t intend to go back to school; it’s clear that he’s decided formal education isn’t for him.

He doesn’t compare himself with his peers, either. “Because I know I don’t enjoy school…I feel as long as I enjoy what I do, that’s all that matters.”

For now, his plans for the future are fairly open-ended. He hopes to expand EZCuts, but it’s not his endgame. He also intends to pick up more skills, such as boxing and tattooing, and turn these into sources of income as well.

“It’s a risky path but the outcome is different. Like I won’t know where I’ll be in the next three years, but it can be a good or bad thing,” he said.

“Anything that I enjoy in life, I’ll just do it…the process is more fun.”

This article was produced as part of Ngee Ann Polytechnic's media practicum module collaboration with Mothership.

Top photo by Shayna Choo Si Na