Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amari Thomas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Amari, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

To be honest, deciding the name for “Don’t Touch My Curls” was a lot more difficult than our customers and supporters may think. When choosing a name for my brand, I knew that when someone heard the name I wanted them to automatically think of natural hair. I also wanted the name to be catchy and have a fun spin to it for multiple uses. Our original brand idea included hair care packages with products from well-known hair care brands, a package specific for curls or a “Curls Package”. As a natural myself, I then thought of how territorial we can often be of our hair products because they are not cheap and natural hair textures require way more product than “a dime sized amount”. This led me to the idea of being able to use Don’t Touch My Curls Package as a brand with our official name being only ‘Don’t Touch My Curls”. I am a thorough thinker and tackled the reasoning for our name from many different angles that I’d like to continue to share overtime.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Since going natural in 2016, I’ve been interested in inspiring others to embrace their coils/curls and natural beauty. I began this journey by using my social media platforms to educate others on how to style and care for their “natural” hair through tutorials and photos. However, one constant barrier many of my supporters faced included access to these products and learning what products were right for their specific hair.

I created ‘Don’t Touch My Curls’ to expand on this passion and provide convenience to curly-haired individuals by shipping packages right to our customer’s doorstep. We currently offer many hair tools essential for healthy hair such as detangling brushes, microfiber hair towels, satin bonnets, satin pillowcases, and SO much more. We also offer quality human hair extensions which mimic natural hair textures to add more versatility to one’s hair styling process.

I am most proud of my ability to remain flexible and teachable throughout this experience rather than giving up when faced with the many challenges of entrepreneurship. I have learned great communication, financial, and interpersonal skills while running this brand and very excited for what’s to come in the future.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./

All of our product designs are created in-house by myself and then I outsource to find vendors that are able to bring my visions to life. Finding the “right” vendor is no walk in the park as I originally suspected. Instead, it is a process of trial and error due to language, communication, and financial barriers. The best way to manufacture a product is first have a sample produced and make adjustments as necessary. If the current vendor is unable to meet your needs, you may have to begin outsourcing again to find another or compromise depending on your preferences.

Being that I am extremely adamant on providing the best quality materials and items to market, I am always willing to test out many different vendors before settling upon one. I also effectively communicate my vision with my vendors and keep great communication with them during the manufacturing process. Many may not realize, but I am very hands-on with all of the products we offer from material percentages, threading, colors and so much more. It almost feels like I’m a fashion designer at times how detailed things can get.

The product I am thus far most excited about having manufactured is our Human Hair Textured Clip-in Extensions. These extensions will ultimately change the hair care game as they offer so much versatility within the hair styling process while avoiding unnecessary damage. They are like no other extensions but better because of the specific details added during the production process. Learn more by following us on instagram @dtmcurlspackage!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

An important lesson that I had to unlearn is that “a loss is a bad thing”. As a first time entrepreneur, I believed that all failures and expenses that led to a lack of profit were a bad thing. As a result, the fear of losing money or even losing customers made me afraid to take risks within my business.

However, I soon learned that “loss” and failures are extremely beneficial to my growth process as an entrepreneur and for Don’t Touch My Curls. For example, when I decided that I needed to make the shift from selling hair styling products to my own products due to a lack of profit, I feared that we would lose customers and we did. However, making such a change for DTMCurls allowed us to impact many more lives than ever imagined with OUR name rather than someone else’s. As much as we’d wanted to please everyone, we learned that by shifting our product types, we were attracting a completely different audience (and that is okay). We welcome new and interactive Curlfriends daily interested to learn more about our customized hair care tools, self-care tools, and human hair extensions. Many projects that I first believed to be a loss taught me to be much more innovative and improved my problem solving skills. Being a new entrepreneur is a trial and error process and “the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risks”.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donttouchmycurls.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dtmcurlspackage/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dtmcurlspackage
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtmcurlspackage
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSuPN5iAn5FUQTDneeVRHnw