Between the salon and the internet café
Nelly’s Hair Salon & Internet Cafe at Station and De Korte Streets, Braamfontein. The name is the entire proposition.
Two trades that have nothing to do with each other, combined because the rent cannot be split and because the same person needs both. Hair, and a printer, and a screen, and a chair.
The combination is a piece of commercial reasoning that a corporate strategist would arrive at from the other direction: instead of expanding the product, expand the hours. One premises, two peak times, one set of fixed costs.
It also tells you what the street needs. A salon needs an hour of someone’s attention. An internet café needs ten minutes and a document. Put them together and the ten minutes can happen while the hour is running — which is how a commuter gets both done on the way to somewhere else.
The sign in the photograph is doing the work of a business plan.