Copyright 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company


By Gregory Lewis and Alva James-Johnson Staff Writers

Madam C. J. Walker knew a moneymaker when she saw it.

The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire, Walker founded her empire a century ago on products and processes to straighten black hair.

Today the business is a billion-dollar industry, attracting mega-corporations and business-savvy entrepreneurs.

In South Florida's black neighborhoods, sprawling beauty supply super-stores offer row after row of artificial hair, relaxers, coloring, and shampoos.

"The only regret I have is that blacks no longer control the business, especially when there's so much money involved," said Hopeton Kenton, a West Palm Beach businessman who sold his black beauty supply store to an Arab-American businessman in 1996.

Hair care historically was the cornerstone of black enterprise and blacks controlled the black hair care market. "Doing hair" was a mom and pop business run in kitchens and on porches as often as in stand-alone shops. Black-owned companies manufactured many of the hair care products.

In the 1950s and 1960s "most women who had businesses were hairdressers," said scholar Niara Sudarkasa, a Fort Lauderdale native who served as president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. "There's no question that beauty salons and hairdressing were a big economic item in the black community."

Today, black women are flocking to cosmetology schools, often to perfect a craft they learned at home, said Deniece Henry, who teaches at the Sheridan Technical Center for Cosmetology in Hollywood.

Many of the women have jobs waiting for them at a relative's shop, but after schooling, some opt for more lucrative salons that have mostly white clientele.

"I don't teach black hair care," Henry said. "I teach them it's a business and after they are educated they see where the money really is."

The time-consuming process of braiding hair may bring $200 for a day's work done on the back porch, but professionals in New York get $900 for a similar job. A Las Olas hairdresser doing strand-to-strand hair weaves can command $1,600 a head, Henry said.

While black beauticians and barbers still have a corner on the service side of the industry, the manufacturing, wholesale and retail side have gone mainstream.

Many of the beauty supply stores in black neighborhoods in Broward and Palm Beach counties are now owned by Arab-American businessmen. Korean-American entrepreneurs control the distribution of many of the products, said Sue Lee of Super City Discount Beauty Supply in Oakland Park.

Competition is tough.

"We can't compete with the Arabs," said Andrea Edwards, who has worked for black-owned beauty supply stores since the 1990s. "They have six or seven different stores and buy in much larger quantities."

At the Beauty Supply Warehouse, a 15,000-square-foot, black beauty supplies superstore in Lauderhill, a constant stream of women arrive emptyhanded and leave with bags of hair and other products.

Nadine Whitaker, 29, of Lauderhill, said she was there for a year's supply of Jehri curl weave that was on sale for $4.99. "Discounts, and whoever has the best price" get the business, she said.

Manager and part-owner Chris Hani, a Jordanian-American, said he and his associates made the transition from grocery stores to beauty supplies when they opened four years ago, and he prefers the latter.

"Grocery stores you sell alcohol and that's against our religion," he said. "This is clean, and you don't have any trouble."