Black stylists getting ahead outside of LR
Growing population gives hair business room to grow
Black Americans spent $6.6 billion on beauty products in 2021, business analyst McKinsey & Company reports, and wherever people live, from Burlington, Vt., to Fairbanks, Alaska, to Saline County, there are Black barber shops, beauty parlors and estheticians.
The Black population in Saline County has grown from around 1,800 in 2000, to 10,351 in 2020, when the county had a total population of about 123,000. Black entrepreneurs are offering skincare and haircare services to the booming population.
Krystle Rucker, who owns the KRB Hair Studio at 209 Roya Lane in Bryant, moved to Bauxite from North Little Rock to homestead with her husband 11 years ago, wanting a country setting to raise their family.
Demand is up enough that she brought on two more women, a mother and daughter, Doriane Washington and Maria Carmona originally from Helena-West Helena, to do hair at the studio.
“In Helena, everyone’s moving away. Things are shutting down; it’s part of the Delta. It’s kind of sad,” Washington said. “I don’t get the feeling that it’s my home town anymore, because everybody’s gone.”
She considers Bryant her home now. There’s plenty of work at KRB. They’ve talked about opening their own salon. That said, hair and skin care services for Black customers is still relatively limited.
SHE Hair & Beauty Supply, 5313 Arkansas 5 in Bryant, opened three years ago. A south Arkansas couple, Cushena Scott, who attended Philander Smith University, and her husband, Jay, who was in the military, had been interested in entrepreneurship. Cushena noted Little Rock’s preponderance of beauty supply stores and that “it only made sense” to open a store oriented toward Saline County’s Black population.
“We knew the area was growing and in our mind thought, ‘You know what? Let’s plant one here instead of being a piece of the pie in Little Rock,” she said. “Textured hair just has so many different variables; we have to have products to thrive.”
Black Saline County residents were accustomed to shopping in Little Rock but that offering of convenience helped the couple establish a local niche.
“Some people will make that drive for a 50-cent price difference, and I understand that because of the economy,” Cushena said. Everybody’s trying to save money. Oftentimes when you’re a new business, if someone comes in the first time and you don’t have what they need, they’ll only give you one or two tries.”
Ravyn McDaniel, an esthetician who runs the RM Skin Bar and Salon at 1215 Military Road in Benton, also finds herself competing with Little Rock offerings. She moved from Gurdon, where she was a registered medical technician, five years ago. After some time as a stay-athome mom, she studied at the Benton Beauty Academy, 920 Edison Ave.
She has more white clients than Black clients, around a 70-30 split. Some clients came through referrals from KRB and SHE Beauty; McDaniel said it took a few years after she opened before Black customers started visiting.
“If you [want] good ser
vice, you’ve got to pay to get what you want,” she said. “I can get products that are clinically proven to use. I also can help by giving them steps on their skin care, referring what they can use for hyperpigmentation, dark spots, chemical peels.”
Intimate knowledge of the target market’s needs served to her advantage.
Jay Scott said customers asking for something they don’t have is a sign SHE Beauty needs to continue scaling.
“There is a level of comfort, and it’s the Blackowned business that creates a space where, when a customer comes in, they see someone who understands their culture,” he said. “Most beauty supply stores that cater to our demographic aren’t Blackowned, so whenever they come into one that is Blackowned and have questions, because they might not actually understand what they need themselves, there’s a conversation. And that conversation is a lot easier conversation to have.”
McDaniel is studying how to do permanent cosmetics and would like to begin doing laser hair removal. She’d like to begin offering cosmetic injectables (like Botox) and massages, which would require having more RM employees than the eight who work there now, offering nail care, waxing,
spray-tans, teeth-whitening and hair-styling, including coloring. She has already moved RM to a bigger location.
“It makes me feel loved and happy. There’s no judgment; there’s no racism,” McDaniel said. “Who supports me, I’ll support them back.”
Many of the entrepreneurs think there’s room for more Black-owned businesses in Saline County.
Benton Alderwoman Evelyn Reed, whose nongovernmental job is program management at the Central Arkansas Development Council, a business supporting nonprofits in Benton, praised the utilization of minority- and female-owned business enterprises. Her colleague, Alderwoman Ann Spencer-Cole said there’s room for more Black-owned restaurants in Saline County.
But problems with capital and investment remain.
“We’ve never had many Black-owned businesses in Saline County,” Reed said. “That is something to really think about. It may be Ann and I need to have that conversation with Mayor [Tom] Farmer about bringing Black-owned businesses to the community.”
Spencer-Cole’s son attended Benton High School and is now a physician; she hopes he will open a practice in Saline County.
Many of the entrepreneurs think there’s room for more Black-owned businesses in Saline County.