Cookie Cutters Haircuts for Kids has 121 locations in the Midwest and Canada.
With 121 Cookie Cutters and 38 Snip-its, Neal and Alexis Courtney have established one of the largest multi-brand children’s salon platforms.
Other than sharing technology and some marketing strategies, Cookie Cutters and Snip-its will continue to operate as separate haircutting businesses
When Neal and Alexis Courtney went shopping for a children’s hairstyling salon franchise 10-plus years ago, one of the brands they looked at was Snip-its. With more than 50 locations in the Northeast and Maryland and Virginia at the time, the chain was growing a healthy clip and making solid headway in becoming an industry leader in the segment.
After first operating salons as franchisees, they ended up acquiring Cookie Cutters Haircuts for Kids in late 2014 and then scaling the brand from 24 to 121 locations in the Midwest and Canada over the next decade.
After acquiring Snip-its and its 38 locations on the East Coast for an undisclosed amount, the Courtneys said they’re excited to start the next chapter of their franchise journey with a second legacy brand as they build upon what’s already one of the largest children’s salon platforms at 159 locations.
Cookie Cutters Haircuts for Kids and Snip-its CEO Neal Courtney
“Snip-its is a company we’ve had our eye on for a long time and to be able to grow our platform with them is super exciting. It elevates everything we are doing and makes us more powerful together,” said Neal Courtney, CEO of Cookie Cutters and now Snip-its.
Courtney said the plan is to run Cookie Cutters and Snip-its as two separate companies so they can maintain their unique identities and salon experiences, but have them share technology and infrastructure resources. He said other than forming the new entity, Snip-its Franchising, integrating the back-end software and offering more bundled discounts to repeat customers, it will be pretty much be business as usual for both brands.
It was for those reasons that Courtney preferred to refer to his company’s acquisition of Snip-its as a consolidation of two legacy companies with similar DNAs. He pointed out that Cookie Cutters and Snip-its were both started 30 years ago by parents who were unable to find quality hair salon services for their children in their respective markets. Today, the children's haircutting industry is a substantial and growing market, estimated to be worth more than $5 billion annually.
“One of the things that Snip-its does really well that we want to carry over to Cookie Cutters is the strong partnerships it has with special needs groups like Autism Speaks,” he said. “That is an area that we can do better with at Cookie Cutters.”
Snip-its ended 2024 with 40 units, which is seven fewer than it had at the start of 2022.
Snip-its founder Joanna Meiseles opened her first kid-friendly salon in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1995, and started franchising in 2003. The company moved its headquarters to Burnsville, Minnesota, in 2010, and experienced steady growth until the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to close a number of locations. It ended 2024 with 40 units, which is seven fewer than it had at the start of 2022.
The cost to open a Snip-its franchise ranges from $200,470 to $360,825. The average unit volume for the top quartile of stores was $397,258 in 2024, while the bottom quartile averaged $169,744. The AUV for the two middle quartiles was $231,305 and $285,605, according to the company’s franchise disclosure document.
“The best way to describe Snip-its, I suppose, was it was stagnant the last few years with not much in the way of development,” Courtney said. “The thing we saw was the great services their 15 franchisees were still delivering.”
Cookie Cutters was founded in 1994 by Cookie and Larry Shelton in Indianapolis. The company began offering franchises in 2003, but really ramped up franchise development efforts in 2015 after the Courtneys acquired the brand. Alexis Courtney, who runs the lone company-owned location in Salt Lake City, is the chief operating officer for the company. Christie Fossett, who started off as a salon receptionist, is their vice president of operations.
Cookie Cutters offers their kid clients a fun choice of salon fantasy chairs for their cuts that includes rockets, motorcycles, race cars and princess thrones. The cost to open a Cookie Cutters franchise is between $118,200 to $365,200, and its AUV is $307,080, which Neal Courtney said is a 37 percent increase since COVID.