Miss Jessie's: Creating a Successful Business from Scratch---Naturally

by Miko Branch

  We quickly came to terms with reality and cut our expenses down to the bone. After six months of trying, we gave up the Bond Street lease and moved the business into the living room on the parlor floor of the brownstone we’d purchased in Bed-Stuy. It had to be a quick evacuation, as we scrambled to borrow a friend’s truck and enlisted Victor’s help in loading all our equipment and belongings. Then there were more renovations to hook up the sinks and get the place ready for clients. Until then, every day that passed represented a significant loss of income.

  With nothing but hard work, determination, and some nasty chemicals she picked up at the hardware store, Titi stripped away sixty years’ worth of paint and wallpaper to reveal beautiful original details. As it turned out, our house in the ’hood was a grand and graceful old lady, radiating character from every corner. Pulling away old carpeting, we discovered perfectly preserved parquet flooring, which Titi sanded and refinished. Inch by inch, Titi was uncovering a treasure. On the sills, door frames, and pilasters, we discovered stunning wood moldings with incised lotus and vine designs in the Eastlake ornamental style typical of the period when the home was built, in 1910 (yes, Titi researched it all when we moved in). All this fine detail was featured on the original sliding French doors that divided the parlor in two, making it an ideal setting for our home salon.

  No task is too small. Pitch in and do whatever needs to be done to keep costs down and to sustain and grow what is yours.

  We used the front half for the waiting area and located our sinks and styling stations on the garden side, beyond the French doors. When Titi was through with her handiwork and we’d reinstalled all of our salon equipment from Bond Street, including the Hollywood bulb mirrors, the place was transformed. We used everything we had and invested every dollar we made into this single floor of the house, to the point where it had become a kind of oasis in the middle of Bed-Stuy. As one of my clients would observe years later, “It’s like some 1930s parlor in Harlem where all the beautiful jazz singers would go to do their hair.” That was exactly what we were going for.

  As soon as the place was ready, we proceeded to try to build the business back up from scratch.

  A BRAND-NEW WAVE

  This time it would be different. I was done with the wash, set, and blowout specials. The Dominicans were already encroaching on our market, straightening hair at cut-rate prices. Discounting my services made me feel cheap and depleted my soul. I felt every blow, because I was doing all the work. The cheap prices also made little sense when we factored in labor and expenses and our low volume of customers. There was no way anyone but a handful of diehard regulars would make the trip to Hancock Street. Most of our regulars got turned off over the phone. When they called to find out where we’d moved to, this is how the conversation would go:

  “Hancock Street! Where’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s easy. You just take the A train to Nostrand Avenue.”

  “Where? What neighborhood is that?”

  “Bed-Stuy.”

  “Oh, okay, I’ll call you back.”

  We got a lot of that, although some callers were more direct about it:

  “What the hell you doing all the way out there?” was one reaction.

  “Say what? Take the A train to Nostrand Avenue? Are you crazy?” was another.

  People just didn’t want to make the journey past the corner bodegas with dudes standing out front, loud street vendors, pawnshops, public housing, and vacant lots. Clients had to really want to see us to be willing to walk past some of the blocks that got you to our little haven on Hancock. This meant that our salon had to become a destination spot—a place where clients could get something that was impossible to find anywhere else. It was time for a total reinvention: new rules, new techniques, new pricing, and a brand-new market. Looking back past all the initial trauma, forcing ourselves to make a fresh start, was probably for the best. We had nothing to lose, because hardly anyone was coming to us.

  TAKING CONTROL

  In mid-May 2000, my son, Faison, was born. There was no time to heal. I had bills to pay and mouths to feed. In many ways, that was a good thing, because it gave me clarity. Sometimes you make the best decisions when your back is up against the wall.

  Fortunately, to make up for those years of absence, our mother gave up her life in Zen retreat for my sake. I was shocked, as she had never said no to those people.

  “It is an opportunity to help you as a single mother, and an unrepeatable, wonderful opportunity to be a part of Faison’s first year of life,” Mommy told me. “I am so grateful for this.”

  For the first year of my son’s life, she moved in with us, helping me out with the day-to-day child care and allowing me to focus exclusively on my craft. I gave her some money to cover her expenses, but her presence was priceless. It was a lifesaving intervention at a time when I couldn’t afford a nanny. My mother made fresh squash, carrots, and pureed bananas for my growing boy and healthy, nutritious meals for me. She was always careful with the timing of her cooking and movements inside the house, to keep the atmosphere in the salon more professional than domestic. Her nurturing presence rehabilitated me.

  That year went by fast, and when it was over, Mommy left for Japan to continue her training as a Zen nun. I was on my own again, juggling work with the care of my baby boy.

  A NEW LOOK

  Tending to the needs of my little boy made a woman out of me. One evening during Faison’s bath time, an idea came to me. When I put him in the sudsy water, he was a slippery bundle of squealing delight who generated a surprising amount of power while he splashed and shook his tiny fists. All that giggling and wriggling was the highlight of my day, but it left me and my hair a soaking-wet mess. This was not good, because it took me hours to get my thick hair straightened and styled to perfection. I’m a hairstylist with a reputation for making my clients look as if they’ve just stepped off a magazine cover, so I have a personal standard of grooming to uphold. It was not an option to pull my hair back, give in to the frizz, or wear it under a hat.

  It wasn’t like I could just start all over: I had to wash, condition, roll, set, sit under the dryer, and then blow my hair out straight. The goal of all this effort was to produce long, silky tresses that resembled European women’s hair—a next-to-impossible aesthetic standard for women of color that’s existed for generations. To maintain that ironed-out look, it typically takes at least one salon visit a week, which might be dragged out over hours if you include wait time.

  Since giving birth, I’d been slowly moving away from that highly coiffed version of perfection. It was a gradual change as I experimented with curly looks and grew out some of the relaxer, but it was subtle, and the result wasn’t quite working for me. I felt like a work in progress.

  Turn crisis into opportunity. There’s no better time to take a risk than when you have nothing to lose.

  Physically and mentally, I’d been feeling overwhelmed, and it was time to take back control. It was time to shed my old skin and come up with a whole new look. It was also necessary to figure out a way to appear polished and fresh without having to go through my weekly and daily straightening rituals. As I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, I decided to take some drastic action.

  When I came downstairs to our salon on the second floor, Titi took one look at me and flipped. “Miko,” she gasped, “what are you doing?”

  Through the magic of a needle, thread, and curly brown and blond weave hair, I’d gone from a Kimora Lee Simmons look—dark shoulder-length hair with a soft bend at the ends—to a wild head of tight and loose curls. I had been watching a lot of television at the time, and I really loved Free’s blond Afro on Black Entertainment Television’s 106 & Park. In the late nineties, while most personalities I saw on television sported straight hair, Free rocked her natural ’fro with style.

  I loved my new look, but to judge by my sister’s reaction, you’d think I’d inked a tattoo on my face. “What’s the problem? You don’t like it?�
�� I asked Titi, mildly amused. If she only knew I’d been thinking about dyeing my hair blue and getting a nose ring. I felt like the teenage girl in Queens again, going left when everyone else was going right, and it gave me such joy.

  “You’re going to ruin our business!” she shrieked.

  Titi was afraid that, as the face of and the head of the hair salon we ran, I was going to scare away our clients. But I knew in my bones that it was time to take over and do something bold. I was thinking of a master plan.

  Treat your business as you would your own child. Protect and nurture it.

  I could no longer afford to allow anyone to be in control of my failures or successes. Throughout most of my life, I had been passive, letting others make, and take responsibility for, the hardest decisions. I was the artist leaving everyone else to tend to practical matters while I focused on the vocation I loved. But that’s no way to run a business or a life. I could not blame anyone but myself if I did not take 100 percent responsibility for my own life.

  GAME CHANGERS

  Changing up my hair was not just an act of self-expression; it was my moment of insight. Instead of allowing others to be in control, then going with the flow, I was going to do what worked for me and my son. Motherhood had sharpened my focus. Faison helped me to understand that it was no longer just about me and my creative passion. I was a businesswoman with bills to pay, and having that tiny being depend on me was all the motivation I needed to start paying attention to all aspects of our business. As a result, I was charging ahead, trusting my gut, and doing whatever was necessary to feed my baby. That meant some bold changes, including a whole new way of doing hair, not just for myself but for our clients. From now on, we were going to specialize in curls!

  I’d already started doing cuts and treatments catering to this market. In 1999, right before we moved out of 71 Bond Street, Titi sent out a press release that included our last photo shoot. The move had gotten us a write-up in Time Out New York, which wanted to feature me as a curl specialist. The article encouraged a handful of women, mostly white, to make the trip to the ’hood to find me. We’d lost many of our original customers after moving into our brownstone, but the new customers followed us. It was a burst of activity that generated just enough income to tide us over during one of the worst periods in our business.

  Initially, we were surprised by this new customer, but we were also excited. It gave me the opportunity to work with a multitude of curly-hair types, and it was a pleasant departure from all the hair straightening that had been my bread and butter until that point. The more familiar I became with the intricacies of each hair type, the more I thought about what I could do for women with a tighter-coiled curl.

  That wave of business from outside the community also meant there was a large untapped market. I realized that many black women could benefit from my updated hair techniques. It was just a question of becoming more proactive in reaching this customer and making her aware that we had the expertise to work wonders with her God-given hair texture.

  For too long, natural hair was called “nappy”—an insult to all of us and the very worst thing you could say about our hair. I wanted to show the world that it wasn’t nappy, it was curly. For the most part, hair services put women in two categories: overprocessed and stick-straight, or all-natural. Women had become distant from their roots, literally and figuratively. They had no idea that beautiful, shiny, defined curls were possible. As a result, there was no happy medium, and I could sense the frustration in many of my existing clients. My gut told me there had to be countless women who wanted what I had already given myself.

  This required drastic action. I decided we were going to do what no one else could do: make a black woman’s natural hair texture look great by focusing on the texture and curl pattern. From now on, I was going to use all the skills I’d been honing to give her gorgeous curls and free her from those weekly salon visits that often took hours. Who had time for that? Today’s woman wanted to spend her time doing what she enjoyed. Times were changing. She wanted to get up off of that salon chair so she could live her life and pay her bills. In short, her wants and needs were no different from my own.

  Allowing my hair to go curly felt freeing, and I wanted nothing more than to spread that joy. I would use both natural and chemical methods to give her what she wanted. In other words, whatever worked for me would surely work for thousands of other working moms and professional women. This option was missing in the marketplace.

  My instincts were right. Within a year, our phone was constantly ringing with women willing to fly in from all over the country. Within two years, we were earning $300,000 to $400,000 a year, one of our early milestones; we were making $700,000 in revenues annually and gaining a national reputation as leaders of the natural-hair movement, right from our brownstone in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

  Seven

  IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HAIR

  You’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on . . .

  —FABERGÉ ORGANICS SHAMPOO COMMERCIAL, CIRCA 1980

  Mapping out what needed to be done with my client’s hair, with its tight, almost impenetrable kink in the back and crown area and a typical looser kink in the front, I was so focused on its intricacy and texture that I almost didn’t hear her at first.

  “Why are you charging me so much for this?” she repeated, a little louder this time. “None of the other salons are this expensive. What makes you so special?”

  I looked up to see a pair of angry eyes flashing at me in the mirror. This lady was not pleased with me, and she was determined to make her point. In 2002 she’d paid the twenty-five-dollar nonrefundable deposit, fully aware of what I charged for my services, and made the trip all the way from downtown Brooklyn to our home salon in Bed-Stuy, so she clearly wanted what I had to offer, regardless of the price I was charging. It happened time and again with our natural-hair customers, especially in the early days of our business.

  “You know, a hundred and twenty-five dollars isn’t all that much when you think about it,” I told her. “I’m going to spend the next three to four hours washing, combing, parting, detangling, cutting, blow-drying, and natural-styling your hair manually. You’re going to walk out of here with a lustrous head of curls that you didn’t even know was possible. And I’m going to give you all the information you need to keep it looking this good. You will have this knowledge for the rest of your life. Matter of fact, you may not need a stylist after I share my techniques with you.”

  Our customers typically spent a minimum of twenty-five or thirty dollars at other salons, where they were beholden to their stylists for weekly straightening and blowouts. That added up to at least three hundred dollars in the period between salon visits. Not to mention the time investment—up to a full day in the salon, mostly waiting around, depending on how busy the salon was. Titi did a good job of patiently explaining before they came in, but occasionally, a customer would feel like she had to test me as I was doing her hair.

  After I explained the process to her and why it cost what it did, the woman zoned out while I went to work transforming her kinky, tight, and coarse hair, elongating each strand to create a crowning glory of defined, touchable, moisturized, springy curls. By the end of the process, she looked beautiful, with a brand-new head of curls. When she peered in the mirror, she gave me a sheepish smile. “Is this really my hair, Miko? Is my hair really naturally curly? I have had this hair for over forty years! I never knew it could be this different and nice. I have curls.”

  Of course, she came back.

  Know your worth. Yes, you can charge a premium when you’re offering a unique service or product. Customers will pay for value.

  Sometimes it’s necessary to educate your customer. It was only later on, typically a month or two after the first salon visit, that they finally understood the full value of their investment. Titi and I were empowering them with the tips they needed to live their lives and keep themselves l
ooking good until I saw them again. I was giving them freedom and saving them money in the long run.

  Internet chat rooms helped with this education process. We focused on teaching, sharing the secrets of proper hair and scalp care, and dispelling some of the misinformation about natural hair. One of the main myths was that natural hair is easier to style and maintain than relaxed hair. That’s not necessarily true. It takes care, conditioning, and effort to maintain a healthy, gorgeous head of natural curls. Yes, some mornings you can just get up and go, but most of the time it needs tending with products and techniques like the double strand twist, in which two small sections of hair are twisted together (more on these techniques at the end of the book). Unless women go for short barber cuts, or what we call “The Big Chop,” which can limit styling options, natural hair has so much more volume that it requires a lot of time. It helped women to know that they would need to be involved in their own hair maintenance before they sat in one of our salon chairs.

  Apparently, our efforts to educate were paying off. Hundreds of other women were beginning to see the true value of what we were offering, and we were getting booked back to back with customers from all over the world. We had never been that busy, even at our peak in the original salon on Bond Street. In fact, our growth was outpacing our capacity to the point where women were wandering all over the house. One customer who arrived early for her appointment went looking for a bathroom and walked into my living quarters downstairs! We were on a roll, eating off our new hair platform—curls. Our phone was blowing up with calls.