BLACK BEAUTY 2020: SHIFTING AESTHETICS AND HEALTH CONCERNS COULD TRANSFORM THE BEAUTY MARKET
Black beauty in America long involved women shopping in Korean-owned beauty supply stores where they would buy products containing unhealthy chemicals.
In the last few years, there have been signs of change. African American women are increasingly buying different products from black-owned businesses as they transition to more natural hairstyles, according to Mintel, a market intelligence agency.
As black female shoppers at beauty supply stores lean toward more natural hairstyles and extensions, they often rely on stylists and beauty influencers to help them decide what to buy. However, they are sometimes led astray when Korean owners suggest products that don't work, which has led some to seek out black-owned stores where they can get better-targeted advice, according to Rita Chatman.
Rita Chatman, a South Los Angeles hairstylist, says she has often told clients to go to a Korean-owned store with instructions about what to buy only to have staff there realize they don’t stock the goods and convince them to buy something that isn’t suitable, because they still want the customers to purchase something.
Haitian immigrant Lesley Andujar who got into the beauty supply business in 1985 when he bought Trina’s Beauty Supply—which is half beauty supply, half salon—has since witnessed dramatic changes in both the shop’s gentrifying Mid-city neighborhood and the beauty supply industry, but the changes began much earlier.
During the 1960s, Koreans largely took over the black beauty supply industry in the U.S with storefronts. Before they brought these shops to African American communities, products had been sold from door to door. Women in Korea began to cut their hair for export in the form of weaves and extensions that sold largely to African American women. It was an era when black women increasingly sought wigs.
Koreans and Korean-Americans built up trade networks that, thanks to access to credit, helped them to quickly deliver wigs in sync with sought-after styles in the U.S. at cheaper prices, according to Associate Professor of Sociology Ku-Sup Chin and his colleagues.
Over the years, beauty supply stores also diversified their offerings and their clientele expanded far beyond the African American community to include substantial numbers of whites and Korean-Americans, according to senior lecturer in cultural and creative industries, Hye-Kyung Lee. These days, alongside wigs and related products, they sell hair accessories, aromatherapy goods and other items.
The hair such stores sell also changed in the 1990s, as fallen hair picked up at Indian temples largely replaced Korean hair in extensions, according to Malaysian Hair Imports. But Korean dominance of the beauty shops continued.
Even now, Koreans and their descendants own approximately three in four beauty supply stores in America. African Americans own less than 10 percent of such shops, even though a 2018 Nielson report calculated that blacks fork over more than $17 out of every $20 spent nationally on hair care for a total of $473 million.
NEW HAIRSTYLES
There are signs of customer-driven change in the industry as tastes change. A 2019 report by Mintel found that African American consumers are looking for healthier hair products for their hair care, and many are transitioning to natural products.
In the last three years alone, 80 percent of black consumers have worn their hair in a natural, chemical-free state, according to Mintel research. While wearing their hair natural, more than half of them wear it in a protective style, a style that tucks away the ends of the natural hair for protection, like twists or braids.
Patrice Simmons, owner of Sun Goddess Beauty Center salon, laid out some notable differences in the ways that younger and older African American women wear their hair these days.
“A lot of older women are cutting their hair off,” Simmons said. “Women over 40 were looking for something easier to maintain… Instead of just looking good or following a certain trend, we’re more conscious about hairstyles that fit our lifestyle.”
Simmons noted that younger women want more versatile hair so they can do different things with it, as opposed to more permanent styles like dreadlocks—famously worn by reggae stars like Bob Marley.
“Some don’t want to loc their hair or perm their hair because they want to be able to wear braids and weaves and different styles,” Simmons explained. “They want to have that option to switch it up.”
Many professional hairstylists are still heavily involved with chemically-relaxed hair and straightened hairstyles, leaving some women with natural hair to depend on amateur stylists on YouTube or online beauty influencers who may or may not have expertise.
Learning to imitate these influencer’s hairstyles can force consumers to buy multiple hair products to help maintain them. But studies have recently shown some of the fragrant products on the market are, in some cases, cancerous and unhealthy.