Scott Sharkey

Founder & CEO Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Scott Sharkey is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids, a children’s hair salon franchise he built with his wife and business partner Linda Sharkey from a single Connecticut location into one of the largest kids’ salon brands in the world, with more than 220 locations open and dozens more in development. The commercial insight that drove that growth was structural rather than cosmetic: most salon businesses can only expand as fast as they can find licensed stylists willing to become owner-operators. Sharkey’s was built instead around semi-absentee ownership, sold to investors and business operators who employ the stylists rather than being one, which decoupled expansion from a scarce and difficult-to-recruit pool.

Career Highlights

• Grew Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids to 220-plus open locations, with roughly 78 more in development including about 40 due to open in 2026.
• Built the brand around a semi-absentee, passive-ownership franchise model aimed at investors rather than licensed stylists.
• Recognized by Franchise Times as the Fastest Growing Children’s Hair Salon, and named to Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 including its 2018 list of top franchises under $150K.
• Built the business jointly with Linda Sharkey, who originated the concept and brought advertising experience from Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey Advertising.
• Expanded into related brands including Sharkey’s Hair It Is and Sharkey’s Haircare Products.
• Previously part of one of the earliest barcode printing businesses, sold around 2000.

Professional Journey

Sharkey is originally from New York and attended the University of Hartford. His professional background before the salon business was in barcode and thermal printing — he has described being part of one of the original companies to invent and print barcodes in the 1980s, and public profiles list him as a Senior Consultant at IIMAK, International Imaging Materials, a longtime manufacturer of the thermal-transfer ribbons used in barcode and label printing. He and his family sold that business around 2000, shortly before he and Linda left New York City for Connecticut, a move driven by the cost of raising children in the city.

The salon concept was Linda’s idea. She came out of the advertising industry, having worked at agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey Advertising, and the couple approached the question the way an agency would: they ran four focus groups in Connecticut to test whether parents actually wanted a salon built specifically for children aged nought to fourteen, and opened their first location within four months of doing so. The proposition addressed a genuine and widely felt annoyance — haircuts for small children are frequently unpleasant for everyone involved — by designing the entire experience around the child rather than treating them as a difficult adult customer.

What turned a good local business into a large franchise was the ownership model. Sharkey structured the franchise for semi-absentee, passive owners: people who invest in and oversee the business while licensed stylists do the cutting. That removed the constraint that limits most salon chains, since the pool of investors willing to fund a proven concept is far larger than the pool of stylists willing to take on the risk and administration of ownership. Combined with a relatively low entry cost — the brand appeared on Entrepreneur’s 2018 list of top franchises under $150K — it produced sustained unit growth, past 220 open locations with roughly 78 more in development.

Scott and Linda continue to personally own and operate the original corporate salon in Westport, Connecticut, which the company uses to pilot new concepts before rolling them across the system, and the group has extended into related brands under the Sharkey’s Franchising Company umbrella, including Sharkey’s Hair It Is and Sharkey’s Haircare Products.

Education

University of Hartford

Attended