Hair Supply Stores… pay attention

Posted by Nathalie on August 29, 2007

I was poking around on roshini.net and found a video by blackhairdvd.com discussing the black hair care market and where our money REALLY goes. The opening lines are as follows….

“African American women spend billions every year on hair products.
Even though they only make up 10% of the American Population, they buy 70% of all wigs and extensions purchased in the United States.”

Many of us use/buy our hair products without taking any consideration as to where they came from, but after watching the videos below, I’ve decided to look closer at how I spend my money, at least when it comes to buying black hair care products.

————– Part Two : Link
————– Part Two : Link
————– Part Three : Link
————– Part Four : Link

Out of all of the millions that are being spent by the black community on hair care products and extensions, only a fraction is coming back in. And where is it going? To the Koreans of all people. Not to say that it’s a bad thing for any group to be successful entrepreneurs, but the methods in which the Koreans are going about it are almost unethical in my eyes. They have an easy time taking our money for many reasons:

• Opening a store for them is not hard on their wallets because most of them are located in low-income, cheaper properties of the urban community (The section of town that need economical help the most)
• They have a tight network of wholesalers and distributors and work together to make sure that <i>we</i> do not get any substantial part of this market.
• Although there is a small percentage of black-owned hair supply stores, they are not any type of threat to the Korean-owned stores because of their capability to charge less for their products, and therefore, gain more clients.

With all that’s going on right now, this really isn’t a big deal to the most of us. But to the honest, hard working black entrepreneur who’s trying to get into a market geared towards their people, this is really devastating. The vast amounts of jobs that could be available in lower-income, urban communities are being compromised as well.

Bobsa.org (Black Owned Beauty Supply Association) is a group geared towards gaining some of the control of the black hair care/beauty supply market in the United States. They provide an interesting list of Black Hair care distributors and also have a good list of beauty supply stores that are black-owned.

When making your next purchase of hair extensions, or black hair care products, please be conscious of where you’re purchasing from and where those hard-earned dollars really go.