Creations Barbershop and Salon

Ty Campbell doesn't consider himself an artist. He doesn't draw, can't paint, strays outside the lines when he colors with his kids. But hand him a pair of clippers and something amazing happens. His version of art is in the details — the shape of a fade, the precision of a lineup, the extra ten minutes to get it right when someone else would have handed you the mirror and moved on.

"The goal of the guy who was here before me was to be just a little bit better than Great Clips," Ty says. "And I looked at it like — that was your bar?"

Ty sets the bar for his standards much higher.

He didn't grow up in Montana. He didn't grow up anywhere, really. He was taken from his mother before he was two. Moved through foster homes and group homes. Was adopted multiple times. Met his mom when he was fourteen. Flew to Montana at twenty-six to meet his dad for the first time.

"Technically, I'm not supposed to be who I am today," he says. "I should be a drug addict. My mom was a drug addict. My dad did drugs for many years."

He says this without an ounce of self-pity. Ty doesn't believe in feeding that negative energy.

"Bad things happen to you as a kid. Yeah, you had a rough childhood. Get over it. You're an adult now. You make all the decisions."

The decisions he made while growing up in Santa Rosa, California, were heavily influenced by barbers in his life. He spent Saturdays in his uncle Jose's barbershop — not a blood uncle, but close enough to call him one. It was a traditional, first-come-first-serve, cash-only, old-school place where you waited your turn and listened to whatever was happening in the room. His cousin Jerry ran a newer shop across town — West Coast Cuts — where every barber who came through eventually went on to open their own place.

"That's really what it's about," Ty says. "Watching how other people did stuff. And then when it's your turn, you emulate what they did. And sometimes what works for them doesn't work for you, and you adjust."

Ty began cutting hair in high school — ten-dollar cuts at his house, the game on TV, conversation included.

Between the barbershops, Ty spent six years in nightclub promotion, shaking hands and handing out cards every night. While he honed his networking skills through the entertainment world, people would still seek him out for cuts on the side. He became a single father at twenty-four, got full custody of his kids at twenty-six, and started cosmetology school — it was a grueling hour-and-a-half commute each way, six days a week. Money ran out halfway through. Years later, a friend told him about an apprentice program in their city. A few days later, he was enrolled.

In September 2020, Ty loaded up his family and drove to Montana.

He was supposed to go to Great Falls, where his dad lives. Helena happened instead — his wife's best friend from high school had settled here. Within a week and a half, Ty's phone rang. A group of teenagers had gotten his number from the friend, who managed the local Walmart. They'd been asking her for years if she knew anyone who could cut their type of hair.

"I was in the garage," Ty says. "I didn't have a shop. I'd only been here a week and a half. I told them, if you want a cut, just pull up to the house."

They did. And it started.

Ty worked one day at an existing Helena barbershop before he knew it wasn't going to work. The owner tried to keep him by dropping names of local VIPs. Ty had been in town three weeks. He didn't know who any of them were.

He bought the shop on Butte Avenue from a salon owner who wanted out and opened Creations on November 1, 2021. To build his clientele, he did what he'd learned in the club days — he networked, incessantly. Every afternoon, every night, fifty business cards minimum at local bars. He'd introduce himself, buy a drink, and say: "I know you probably already have a barber, but I'm really good at what I do. If you ever need somebody, give me a call."

It took a while. Five years later, people still walk in remembering those original cards he handed out and the positive impression he made on them.

What Ty brought to Helena was more than a different style of haircut. He brought a different standard of what a barbershop experience could be.

"Nobody was doing lineups out here," he says. Mixed kids, Black kids, kids with textured hair — they'd seen the fades and the precision work on Instagram, but nobody in town could deliver it. Ty could. And the word spread the way it always does: someone walks out of his chair looking sharp, somebody else stops them and asks where they got it done, the phone rings, and the next client finds their way to his chair.

He's never paid a dollar for advertising. Every client found him through Google, through a referral, or through seeing someone else's cut.

But the craft is only half of what happens behind the chair.

"I am the conductor," Ty says, borrowing from the symphony. He manages the mood of the room the way a musician manages a set. No politics, no disrespect, nothing that makes another client uncomfortable. When the conversation drifts somewhere it shouldn't, he steers it back. When a client walks in carrying the weight of their day, he reads what they need — encouragement, silence, or just someone to listen.

"It's an art form to figure out what my clients need from me," he says. "Do they need me to relate to them? Do they need me to shut up and let them vent? Do they need a pep talk?"

He's had clients in his chair who don't know he was sleeping in a hotel for two weeks because things at home were in a rough patch. He crossed the threshold every morning and gave them the best version of himself anyway. That's his standard.

On August 3, Ty opened a new location downtown on 6th Street. Floor-to-ceiling glass, street-side visibility, everything in one open room — the layout he always wanted but never had at the Butte Avenue location. He inherited that first space; this one he chose with care. Three chairs to start, room for six.

This is his chance to reset. He calls it his last hoorah.

Over five years, he's learned that the hardest part of owning a barbershop isn't cutting hair. It's managing the people who rent the other chairs — their personalities, their personal crises, their inconsistency. He's had renters who let their lives spill into the shop. He's watched talent dissolve because someone couldn't compartmentalize the things affecting them in life.

"I compromised the vision early on," he says. "I was just looking for sustainability — get the rents paid, keep the lights on. And I think I let people in that I shouldn't have. The new shop is a reset to do it the way I initially wanted."

There was a time not long ago when he considered giving it all up — just renting a single chair somewhere, no employees, no overhead, no headaches. Just Ty and his clients and his clippers. His sister told him once: "You need to hire better." And he thought: if somebody offers me six hundred fifty bucks in rent, I'd be a fool not to take it.

He's done thinking that way.

Ask Ty what surprised him about Helena, and he'll tell you it's the opposite of what he expected. He thought a small Montana city would push back on a barber from out of town doing things differently. Instead, he keeps hearing the same thing: "Man, we needed somebody like you."

He's got a dirt bike now. He snowboards all across Montana. He bought a truck and a pair of cowboy boots. His two youngest — the Montana babies, he calls them — love to fish and play outside. His three older kids who moved with him from California had a tougher time adjusting to Montana's slower pace of life, but are finding their own way, the way all young adults do. Ty sees the long game.

"I'm just a big kid out here," he says. "I'm doing all the things I wish I did as a kid."

Where does he want Creations to go? He's dreamed about shops in Great Falls, Missoula, Bozeman. He's been close to signing leases before and pulled back each time — grateful he did, every time. For now, the downtown shop is the focus. Three chairs, his standard, his vision.

"I still see the potential here," he says. "The glass is half full."

He pauses.

"It's been empty for so long that now it's amazing. Now it's definitely half full."