2014
Tomás Ferreira opened Charcoal Unit in October 2014 in a narrow ground-floor space on Rua de Cedofeita, Porto. He had spent the previous four years working at a barbershop in Braga called Navalha Velha, where he learned wet shaving from a barber named Augusto who had been doing it since the 1970s. Tomás came back to Porto with a specific idea: a shop that felt like a workshop rather than a salon. Dark walls, good light over the chair, no television, no music loud enough to stop a conversation.
2021
The first year was slow. Tomás was the only barber, working Tuesday through Saturday, and most of his early clients came through word of mouth from a handful of regulars who had followed him from Braga. In 2016 he brought in Rui Magalhaes, a barber he had trained alongside at a short course in Lisbon run by the Escola de Barbeiros de Lisboa. Rui handles the second chair and has a particular skill with textured and curly hair that Tomás is the first to admit he doesn't match. Together they settled into a rhythm that still holds today.