Our Story
Core Values
INTEGRITY
Doing what you say you will do when you say you’ll do it.
HUMILITY
Realising that the more you know, the more there is to know.
CREATIVITY
To create from nothing, a fresh approach to communication and craftwork.
Shirley Popham is the managing director and also founding director
At a draconian boarding school in South Africa, girls were only allowed to wash their hair once a week, leaving Shirley battling with greasy hair during her teens and squeamishness around hair.
As a result, she was often intimidated by hair salons until in 1985, she stepped into David Popham Hairdressing, where the ethos of the current Popham was founded.
Listening to her story and then cutting her hair so that it was washable daily, transformed her experience of her own hair, and she becomes. Regular client. Recognising, her natural ability with people, David offered her a job 6 months later, and the rest is now history…..
It’s a cliche story, by 1991, they married and started a family, and decided to pursue new pastures selling the original David Popham Hairdressing to a local salon owner.
After nearly 10 years of being a full time Mum to their 3 boys In 2002, they decided to rebuild the remaining reputation of Popham together.
They opened North Parade in 2002, and then Shirley, driven like her father Murray McLean, wanted to expand, which they did, first to Summertown in 2010, then Jericho in 2017 and finally Headington in 2024. Sadly following a flood, the original flagship salon in North Parade was closed in late 2024.
With David now retired from daily operational issues, Shirley runs the business, with the support of her management team.
Her mission in life, is to give every young person, whom they take on, the opportunity to become financially independent and create a career path they love and are properly rewarded for. She loves to mentor young people, watch them transform from more often than not, poor self esteem to a full self expressed stylist, holding their own amongst the clients of Oxford.
Shirley remains committed to fully employing all staff at Popham, as well as continuing with the strong Award winning Apprenticeship Program.
Shirley Popham
Managing Director and Founding Director
David Popham is the founding director
As a fifteen-year-old school leaver, I was on my way home from a somewhat clipped meeting with the careers guidance officer, who, on seeing I had no qualifications, recommended the factory line. My Dad had told me, If you want to get a job, get a haircut, so I dropped into the local Ma and Pa salon, where the newest trainee told me what a wonderful time he was having. While I could not quite see what the attraction was, it still seemed better than going on the line with everyone else at the packing factory – seemingly my only other option.
I got home, and my Dad asked me for the third time, “Are you sure you want to be a hairdresser, son?” and suggested I advertise myself in the Hairdressers Journal. My advertisement read School leaver seeks apprenticeship. I got one reply from a salon in the West End and took it, and that, in 1964, was how I became a hairdresser.”
“From then on I stumbled through a few less than sparkling West End salons”
From then on, I stumbled through a few less than sparkling West End salons. Including a longish spell off Carnaby Street where a normal day included pop bands having to be locked in to prevent hoards of girls mobbing the salon for a glimpse of their idols, and my boss selling supposed locks of rock star hair to unwitting fans. I still wonder about all those now older women treasuring their very own fragment of the swinging sixties stars, not knowing that it was just my boss’s slice of that new mad Swinging Sixties prosperity. I decided to move on, and was waiting for my interview at a posh West End salon. While waiting, I listened to the staff laughing about the front page news of some nutter on Bond Street who was cutting everyone’s hair off, suggesting they did not need to come back for six weeks! He won’t last without weekly sets and mid-week comb-outs. For some reason, I got up and left and applied for a job with Vidal Sassoon, the so-called “nutter” in question.
I was told my work was rubbish – but we like the way you move, I was given six months to retrain in the Sassoon precision cutting and geometry, and I got the job. The Sassoon passion for design, Bauhaus, and function-first, hit the zeitgeist of the moment. Women wanted freedom and hair that was functional and sexy – I was hooked. I continued working for Vidal Sassoon in London, Toronto, and New York through the late sixties and seventies.
At the end of the 1970s, I decided it was time to do my own thing, so I moved back to the UK and settled in Oxford in the 1980s.
I opened my first Oxford Salon in North Parade in 1981. The business grew and we opened a second salon in the city centre on the crest of eighties prosperity. I married Shirley, who had worked with me for some time, and we sold up to explore the world beyond hairdressing, thinking that there had to be more! It took me some time to discover that the more I was looking for it, it had been with me all along, I just had not noticed. I was inspired to return to hairdressing – I had missed providing a space for being with people – We opened again on North Parade.
With three Oxford salons, I now support Shirley, who is shaping a new future for our employees and clients.
David Popham
Founding Director