After eight long years of planning, Tyrone Barge is tapping into the Black hair care industry.
Barge made contact with a Korean distributor of a popular line of hair, only to be told that they don’t sell to Black people wholesale.
“He told me it would be bad for business if they sold the hair to Black people wholesale because we are their biggest consumers. His insult gave me the motivation to develop my own hair product,” Barge recalled.
When I first starting reading, I was looking at the OP sideways. Why? Because I'm thinking: "Koreans won't... not "can't" but
won't.... SELL to black wholesaler/distributors!!! That's where black entrepreneurs always get stuck - middlemen (man between the factory/makers and the customer who walks into the door) are the ones who decide what we get/purchase (hair, books, clothes, food, darn near
everything!) and what never reaches the black consumer market (think of all the movies you "hear" about but NEVER come to
your local theatre, or even of food, e.g., fruits/veggies, that aren't sold at your local store, the African print that you have to get in your car and drive halfway across town because it's not mass-marketed, sold in only ONE store).
What this brutha is doing is
beautiful! Ole boy is saying,
I, black man, will decide what hair product will come into the
MY community.... and
MY community will reap the rewards on it at EVERY step - from customer to beautician/stylist to beauty shop owner, to black ME! That he circumvented the Koreans in phenomenal! Others have tried and received the exact same answer as he - "we don't sell to black distributors (middlemen); we keep that
black gold source of income in our
Korean family." Unlike the
many others who gave up, however, bruth-man said there's
more than one way to skin a cat.... and went to China.
Some blacks detest weaves (for many reasons), others luv 'em, but the fact remains - black women spend BILLIONS each and every year on fake hair. The money they're spending, however, is NOT 'fake.' Luv 'em or hate 'em, I'm with the brutha: keep that money at home, circulating through OUR community. I cannot put into words how IMPRESSED I am with brother Tyrone!