Frisco resident Yummie O. has always been a natural beauty fanatic. Expanding up in Lagos, Nigeria, she beloved actively playing with texture and motion in extensive hair. Nevertheless, Yummie, who prefers to go by just her very first name, experienced a dilemma. She’s never ever been ready to increase her hair prolonged.
So, early on, Yummie turned to wigs and extensions. “I’ve been putting on hair extensions for as lengthy as I can keep in mind,” she states. As she grew up, she designed a passion for styling lengthy hair, turning into the “go-to individual for all-matters-hair” in her family members.
For a very long time, however, it was just a passion. Yummie moved to U.S. in the late ’90s to go to the College of Houston. She began performing in IT and moved to Dallas a ten years afterwards. She thought she would constantly continue to be in company environment, but soon after her next daughter was born, she preferred anything distinctive.
In 2010, her mother proposed she begin a hair extensions corporation. Three years later, she launched Yummy Extensions, a luxurious hair corporation marketing almost everything from wigs to braiding hair to tape-ins.
Just before launching, Yummie put in two many years studying merchandise. In 2010, she purchased her initially shipment of wavy hair extensions from abroad. She received it sewn into her personal hair, and slept, showered, swam, and lived in it. “I preferred to check the merchandise,” she states. “I wished to place it on my head. I wished to color it.” She requested her mates and family members to do the same—wear it for 3 months, she requested them, and give her their comments. She went by a lot of tests, Yummie claims, but she needed to make certain she was filling a hole in the sector.
Even though wigs and hair extensions are a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide, Yummie claims there weren’t many choices a decade ago, in particular for real hair products and solutions. She understood she needed to supply merchandise manufactured from normal hair vs . synthetic hair. “You can fundamentally address it like it’s your own hair,” Yummie suggests of pure hair products. “You can shade, flat iron, and curl it. Just about anything you truly want to do with your pure hair, you can do with raw purely natural hair extensions.”
Reduce from a donor, purely natural hair is far more adaptable and can past decades for a longer time than synthetically built hair items. Though noticeably cheaper—natural hair wigs can cost thousands of dollars—synthetic hair doesn’t supply as numerous styling opportunities, in some cases only lasts one particular install, and can possibly soften if styled with heat products.
Yummy Extensions features close to 100 hair products and solutions ranging from 12-inch weft extensions for $115 to a 24-inch curly whole lace wig for $1,595. Yummie resources hair from different international locations in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Laos. “The hair alone is definitely attractive,” she suggests. Additionally, she’s ready to get a variety of strand thicknesses, shades of browns and blacks, and distinctive textures. “The possibilities are countless.”
Due to the fact she released 10 a long time in the past, Yummy has arrived at 100,000 women of all ages, she states, which include purchases from celebs like Angela Bassett, Skai Jackson, and Saweetie. Yummie opened a retail retail outlet in Richardson in 2016. She moved that store’s locale to Preston Street in 2018 and opened a second retail shop in Brooklyn, New York, in 2019.
In 2020, Yummie launched KOSA Specialists, a heat instrument company to work with her hair products. There are a great deal of heat equipment on the marketplace, Yummie says, but not all of them work nicely with extensions “because they might problems the hair and since of the excellent of the plates.” KOSA presently provides a selection of infrared straighteners, a curling iron set, and a blow dryer established. Yummie claims they strategy to offer you extra curling irons, blow dryers, and other hair products and solutions as the company grows.
But, aside from hair and hair tools, Yummie would like to use her firm to spread women’s empowerment to her clientele. She has awarded $50,000 in grants to other gals business people. And she would like to foster self confidence in her younger follower community, whom she calls Yummy Women. “We’re not just in this article to provide you hair,” suggests Yummie. “We’re below to have impact in your existence.”
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Catherine Wendlandt
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Catherine Wendlandt is the on line affiliate editor for D Magazine’s Residing and Residence and Garden blogs, the place she handles all…