blackmattersus.com
Can you tell us a few words about yourself and your business? What is your professional background?
Kamika King
Inspired Beauty was started five years ago this month, and as you’ve seen on our social media, it’s a natural hair care and skin care company founded by me. I also have a spinoff company called the I AM Grooming company that was started in August of last year, and it has been doing very well. We’re doing a rebranding and a re-launch on that. My background is in healthcare. I spent a number of years in commercial real estate and then I transitioned into healthcare when the US market crashed. From that point on I started Inspired Beauty five years ago to deal with some personal issues that I had.
blackmattersus.com
When did this idea first come to you? Do you remember the point when you first got the idea to start your own brand of beauty products?
Kamika King
I do. It was about eight years ago when I kept having mishaps at salons with relaxers in my hair. And so on a quest to resolve some of my own personal hair issues, I began formulating products for me and then I refined them and began the business.
blackmattersus.com
What are some of the issues you’ve faced since you started the business?
Kamika King
I can’t really say that I had a lot of issues other than the usual issues that come with small businesses. That is, with marketing and getting market share, getting into stores, but more so, really just getting confidence behind the brand, testing focus groups to make sure that it wasn’t just something that worked for me and those close to me that I had tested, but that it is something that would be viable on the market.
blackmattersus.com
You have such a wide range of products for various applications: hair, body, face, you even have products specifically for men! How is reception of the products? How are people patronizing them?
Kamika King
We’re doing really good. We’re actually in seven outlets. We have four brick and mortar stores that we’re in. We’re constantly seeking to add new ones, and we also have three online outlets, one being our main website, the second being amazon – we are a designated brand on amazon – and then we also have another partner that handles mostly our men’s products.
blackmattersus.com
So how do you promote your business?
Kamika King
We use a lot of social media, but we also attend a lot of events that are specific to our market. We do events that are similar to the World Natural Hair Show. In LA, we actually do have a good assortment of natural hair festivals and conferences. So we do a lot of that, as well as, like I said, social media and word of mouth.
blackmattersus.com
What do you think? How big is the market for your products?
Kamika King
I really think the sky is the limit. I often say this, that hair is not racial, it’s textural. Even though my niche market may be a certain group of Black or African descent people, Latino women, our products actually work for all hair types. So the sky’s the limit! We don’t have a lot of limitations, it’s just us. The important part is marketing to those different demographics.
blackmattersus.com
What are the nearest goals of your business? How do you plan to develop in the nearest future?
Kamika King
A little bit more of the same, but on a bigger scale. So as we continue to make sales and build our customer base, we will now begin marketing on a grander scale. When you are a starter business, a lot of things that you do, you do for free, or you are trying to seek honorable mentions. As you start to become a little more established, then you have a marketing budget, and you are able to then pay for marketing. And so one of the things that we’re starting to do now is that we’re actually establishing placement and creating opportunities for ourselves rather than hoping that people notice us. That way we stay in front of the customer.
blackmattersus.com
Now let’s talk about your products themselves. What makes them unique from other products on the market? Why should someone buy your products?
Kamika King
Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, is our products were created out of a specific need. And so it was being created out of that specific personal need that makes the products a little bit more intimate and deal specifically with what customers need. When it came to hair loss, which is a big issue within the Black community, having a product that’s met that specific need and can be reproduced over and over again is one thing that makes our products different. Secondly, we are tea based. And I found that once I started this business and started making tea, our proprietary blends of teas as our base-to-base, I’m starting to see more and more companies start to do it. But that was the main thing, we had a tea based line that dealt with particular needs of women and that’s really what made us different. Also, I never had the intent of being a styling company and my goal was never to be a brand that was about finishing products. It was really to be a brand that empowered women to take more control over their hair and their haircare in a more holistic fashion. I wanted to make sure that women were educated about haircare, underlying issues that could be detrimental or causing problems in the hair and then be empowered to fix those things based on what the issue was or what they needed.
blackmattersus.com
What do you think about the current trend of #Black4Black or #LetsBuyBlack, where we’re promoting Black businesses to the Black audience and we’re talking about keeping Black money within the Black economy? Do you think you are a part of this trend?
Kamika King
I do. I’m really in favor of Black cooperative economics. I think it’s very important. I don’t think it’s the end all and the be all for us, but I do think that it is very important for us to be able to support one another’s business ventures and to buy products from people that have our best interests at heart. Why? Because it’s in their own best interest. It shames me when I think that a Black dollar probably stays in our community less than, they say, 45 minutes? I think that we would be in a much better position community-wise, if we did recycle our dollars. I personally on a day-to-day basis spend my money with at least two Black vendors. So I know there are a lot of us out there and I just think that our people should make an effort to frequent those people’s businesses. What we don’t realize is, it’s not just about spending our dollars with Black people and keeping our money in the Black communities. It’s about building community, because there is a much larger epidemic and that is our youth aren’t seeing people that inspire them, or that they want to be like. And we need to understand that when we start teaching our kids to recycle the money within our community, then they’ll be aspirational about things such as being an entrepreneur. They’ll go back to being creative, and they’ll be able to see a viable way to support themselves and their families through their art.
blackmattersus.com
Finally, what do you have to say to your potential customers?
Kamika King
Our tagline is this: Inspire beauty from the inside out. The goal is to inspire and to be inspired and to take a holistic approach to not only your healthcare, but your life in general. And so we want to help empower men, women, families and the general community with our brand. It’s not about just making money. It’s about health, it’s about education, it’s about living, it’s about being free. I often say that life is for the living because it’s a big deal to me that people feel like they have options and that they can make educated and informed decisions with those options.
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