Meet the three sisters behind Buffalo, New York’s first black female-owned beauty store

Black women are the biggest consumers of the beauty industry and in Chris Rock’s documentary on hair, it was mentioned that the black hair business is worth over $9 billion. Regardless of the buying power of African Americans, there are only 7% of them who are stakeholders owning their own beauty supply store.

Three sisters from New York decided to change this imposed status quo by opening their own beauty supply store in Buffalo, New York. This made them owners of the first black female-owned beauty supply store in Buffalo, New York.

The sisters, Brianna Lannie, Danielle, and Lauren Jackson were frustrated about the lack of diversity in the industry for which Black women spend so much of their income and decided to take matters into their own hands and start theirs.

“We literally wear the hair. I change my hair like every month, so it’s good to see people who are actually using the products and using the hair,” said Danielle.

Black hair is beautiful. One person can have type 4C, 3B and 3A on the same scalp, and the picture here is that Black hair needs are often catered to by people who do not have the same hair texture, and this sometimes restricts the options for product choices.

“A lot of times they’ll get the wrong thing or they’ll be led in the wrong direction, so I knew that it was a need,” Brianna told WIVB.

In order to fill the necessary gap and bring more representation to the industry in which African-American women are the majority consumers, The Hair Hive ran by the sisters was opened in March with the help of a local non-profit organization, WEDI Buffalo.

“We have a lot of variety of colors, just a wide spectrum from glow in the dark hair, to sparkle hair, pretty much anything you can think of that’s different we have it in our store because we want to give something to our community that they can’t get anywhere else,” said Lauren.

There is nothing more rewarding than giving back to the community that is a part of who you are today. As a black-owned venture, they sell products from local entrepreneurs in their beauty supply store. They also contribute a dollar of whatever money is spent in their store to support people in their neighborhood.

“Every dollar that people spend in our store goes back to our community, and we want them to know that to support us is supporting yourselves and your surrounding area and we want them to shop with us,” Lauren said.