Tributes paid to founder of Philips Hair Salon

The founder and owner of Philips Hair Salons, Philip Dickinson, has died after a long illness. He was 75.
Philip Dickinson.Philip Dickinson.
Philip Dickinson.

He opened his first salon on Providence Street, Wakefield in November 1974.

Over the next four decades Philip’s entrepreneurial spirit took him into beauty salons, boutiques, hair loss transplants and apprenticeship training.

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Today the company operates four hairdressing salons within West Yorkshire and two Academies delivering hairdressing apprenticeships.

Born in Preston in 1945, he came to Wakefield after being appointed Deputy Clerk to the Wakefield National Health Service Executive Council.

At 23 he was the youngest person in such a role in the country. He found the bureaucracy of the Civil Service too confining and soon branched out on different avenues, culminating in a successful spell as a bingo caller at the former Lucky 7 Bingo Hall on Westgate.

The salon opened during the Three-Day week in 1974, a measure introduced to conserve electricity. A cut and finish cost £1.10 and a perm £3. He subsequently opened Yorkshire’s first Beauty salon in 1979, the Ossett salon in 1981 and further salons in Sandal 1983, Morley 1985 and two academies in Wakefield and Leeds by 2008.

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A tremendous publicist for his company, Philip was the hairdressing expert on Radio Aire’s Peter Levy show during the 1980s and helped run the ‘Look of’ competitions for 13 years in conjunction with the Wakefield Express.

However, he will probably be best remembered for his television commercial in 1985, the first hairdressers in the country to do one. He starred in it himself and ended it with the catchphrase, “If you’re not becoming to him, you should be coming to us”.

In 1999 he set up the Philips Academy to deliver hairdressing apprenticeship training through a contract with the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Subject to OFSTED Inspections, the academy was given an Outstanding Grade 1 in 2011 for the Quality of Provision.

He always considered Philips Hair Salons as an extension of his family and that ethos thrives today with 8 of the 10 management team having started with the company straight from school on an apprenticeship.

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The company has now been run by one of his sons for the last 10 years.

He was a member at Low Laithes and Woodthorpe Golf Clubs and played for Denby Grange Cricket Club.

He is survived by his wife Lynne, two sons Philip and Paul and two grandchildren, Oliver and Maddie.