Author:Taylor BryantUpdated:Nov 26, 2019Original:Nov 26, 2019Global market research firm Mintel predicts that African-American consumers will spend $1.75 billion on hair-care products this year alone. And while the focus for a long time has been on items like shampoo, conditioner and styling products that were created with natural hair in mind , it's also starting to shift to wigs and extensions.
When Ngozi Opara founded Heat Free Hair back in 2012, she was working in finance during the day and owned a hair salon in Washington, D.C. at night. This was around the time when the natural hair movement took off and she started getting a lot of clients that wanted to grow out their straight, often relaxed hair and embrace their non manipulated texture. But, they didn't want to go through with the big chop, opting for protective styles like sew-ins instead.
According to Mintel, between 2015 and 2019, the use of braids and extensions by Black consumers in the U.S. grew 64% and the use of wigs spiked 79%. Nolan says her customers are about 60% "wig connoisseurs," while the other 40% are "wig novices." And while she does have customers that range from white trans women to Latino men, she says the majority are Black women — and such is the case for all three of the women I spoke to.
Today, Opara owns her own factory in China and has more than 50 employees , but her story is very much the exception in the industry. As Knight explains, as great as the movement toward Black entrepreneurship in the wig and extension space is, there's still a lot of work to be done. "We are the ones who are utilizing [the product] the most, we're making it modern, we're making it so that other races want to get in on it and want to wear wigs.
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