Article from treasuredlocks.com
Black women outspend other women by a factor of two to six times (depending on which source you believe) when it comes to hair care. While we represent less than 10% of the population, we spend most of the money spent on hair care in this country. A black woman will take care of her hair- no matter what the cost. Hair care is deeply embedded in our culture as India.Arie so eloquently described in “I Am Not My Hair”. This is tremendous spending power that is being spent largely outside of our community. The vast majority of the money spent by black women on their hair is going to large white-owned corporations, and to Asians who have effectively cornered the market on distribution and retail of black hair care products. As a black owned company servicing the black community, this is something we are obviously interested in and concerned about. How did things get this way? Is there anything we can do about it? Should we do something about it? Why should you even care? In this article, we will address all of these questions.
The first question we will address is "Why should you care?" If you're getting the products you need at a good price, should you be concerned with who you are buying them from? This needs to be considered from two perspectives. First, there is the cost/benefit to you of doing something different than what you are doing today. Secondly, there is your responsibility, if any, to the community.
We established Treasured Locks in April of 2002 because we simply could not find high quality products for African Americans in our neighborhood or city. Living in a largely white area, when we went to the local drug stores and grocery stores to find products, we found a huge variety of products for Caucasians, ranging from poor quality to pretty good and some even very good. But, when it came to African-American beauty products, we found an extremely limited selection and the products that were on the shelves were mostly full of cheap fillers. Even the local beauty supply store sent us to the "Asian beauty supply stores" located in the Black neighborhoods. When we ventured over to the Asian beauty supply stores, we found not much better quality (if any better) products and a lack of service. The people behind the counter knew nothing about our hair care needs and concerns. Wanting the best products for our hair and skin, we chose not to settle for the inferior products we were being offered and turned to an alternative source (the Internet) to get a greater selection. Today, after having had our business for a few years, we receive emails from women on a daily basis thanking us for providing them good information on their hair and skin care needs and for providing them with choices of products that are actually good for them. We also find that even with brands such as Black Opal that are distributed nationally, that many local stores don't carry the entire line or have dropped Black Opal entirely. Women write to us thanking us for making these products available to them again. Our customers have found that they can have choices not being offered in their local stores by shopping with us. They have also found that they can find experts to talk with who share their experiences and can give them advice.
If you can find the products you need (quality and selection) at your local Asian Beauty Supply store, should you go out of your way to buy them somewhere else? How far should you go? How much more should you pay? Only you can answer those questions. A running poll on BOBSA shows that most of the women who answer the poll say they will make at least some effort to buy from black owned companies. But, polls are often skewed simply by who the people are being polled. The women answering the poll on BOBSA's site are a.) on the Internet and b.) on a website all about trying to improve the situation of Black Suppliers in the beauty industry. We think that skews the results. Our intuition tells us the broader population buys from the source that is the least expensive and most convenient. And, more than ninety percent of the time that is going to be the Asian Beauty Supply store on the corner or the White-owned grocery or drug store.
To finish reading the rest of the article go to:
http://www.treasuredlocks.com/black-hair-care-industry.html
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