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Entrepreneurial Style
For salons like the one depicted in the film “Beauty Shop,” there is a celebration of free-flowing exchanges and cultural sisterhood particular to establishments patronized mostly by black women. For salon owner Angela Middleton, it’s a living — and a good one at that. Renting out booths to stylists, plus what she earns doing hair, affords her an annual income of about $60,000, which pays for her sport-utility vehicle and enables her to support her 13-year-old daughter. “It took a while to get to that point. When I first started out, I was making close to $24,000 a year,” says Middleton, 36, who has always owned her own shop. “I never thought about working for someone else.” In the United States, black female salon owners are among the most successful entrepreneurs in their communities. And no wonder. African Americans spend an estimated $5.7 billion a year in the beauty and barber industry, and black women visit the salon an average of 2.5 times a month, according to the research firm Business Trend Analysts Inc./The Leading Edge Group. In an industry dominated by women, African Americans make up 16 percent of professionals in the nation’s hair, nail and skin-care salons, according to the National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences. “The majority of these stylists make more money than white-collar workers,” says Terri Winston, CEO and publisher of Salon Sense magazine, a trade publication. “You have more black women owning beauty salons now. The loans and financing are more easily available than they were 20 years ago.” Black women’s success in the beauty business has a long history. “It was lucrative, especially during the Jim Crow era when most African-American women were in domestic work or industries that didn’t pay much,” says Tiffany Gill, an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. ©2006 BY WN/CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
At some salons, you can’t tell which is hottest: the curling irons, the gossip or the stylists.