Word on the Street: Clovis barbershop cuts urban styles

Alex De La Mora has opened a new barbershop at Sierra Vista Mall in Clovis.

Fade Chop, which opened in April, specializes in men’s urban hairstyles like faux hawks, fades and designs cut into the hair with electric shears.

The store is decorated in traditional red, white and blue barbershop colors, and has a little hip hop attitude to it, De La Mora said.

He plans to add a big projector screen to a wall inside the shop so customers can watch sports broadcasts while getting their hair cut.

This is De La Mora’s fifth barber shop in the Fresno County area and his first in Clovis. The others operate under the name Colima’s Fade Shop.

“We get a lot of clients who come from the Clovis area to the Fresno locations so we decided to move into Clovis,” said De La Mora, who has 14 years of hair-cutting experience.

Fade Chop is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Calling for more space

Alorica, a Chino-based call-center outsourcing company, will be relocating its Clovis call center to larger digs in northwest Fresno later this year.

The company employs an estimated 500 workers at its 30,000-square-foot call center in the Village Square shopping center on Shaw Avenue between Villa and Minnewawa avenues. But growth and expansion plans are prompting a move to a bigger space, said John Foulk, the site director.

Alorica has signed a lease for a two-story, 51,264-square-foot office building about nine miles away, on Blythe Avenue north of Shaw Avenue.

Alorica said it expects to hire another 275 full-time, permanent employees to staff the new location. Job-seekers can visit the company’s website at www.aloricajobs.com.

The company expanded its presence in Clovis less than two years ago with a series of eight open-house recruiting events in October 2010. The company had a goal of hiring 400 to 500 people at that time. The Clovis site has been a call center since 2000.

Another Forever 21

The hip and trendy women’s clothing and accessories store Forever 21 celebrated its grand opening at the Visalia Mall on Saturday.

The store, which is a little more than 12,100 square feet, sells makeup, lingerie, shoes and clothing. It is the company’s fourth location in the Valley.

Last April, Forever 21 opened a 150,000-square-foot, three-story location at Fashion Fair Mall in Fresno — the third-largest store in the chain.

Two smaller stores are located at the Hanford Mall and Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto.

“We are very pleased to have been given the opportunity to expand our business into Visalia,” said Larry Meyer, the company’s executive vice president, “and hope to offer the customers of Visalia Mall a wide selection of fashion-forward merchandise at an affordable price.”