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

Alright, Steven & Whitney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Crown Love Beauty Supply was built from an idea, just like all businesses. Beauty supply is not a new concept, it’s been around for decades. It’s an industry with very little diversity in ownership. It’s business that African Americans are over 90% of the consumer rate, yet under 1% ownership. Not only do we not have ownership in an industry that relies on us, but there has also been story after story about mistreatment in these places. The idea came in 2021 mid pandemic, when I (Whitney) went to a beauty supply store. I felt uncomfortable, I don’t think it was anything that someone did at that moment, but just years of being followed, years of not feeling welcomed, years of being looked at as worthless, as in just give me your money and go. Make it quick. That’s just my personal experience in these stores. I went home and asked my husband what he thought about the lack of diversity in this industry. He eventually agreed that we needed to be the change we wanted to see.

Before we decided to jump in full throttle, we asked ourselves the million-dollar question. Why? Why aren’t African Americans opening up beauty supply stores, when we all know we are the main consumer? The answer became clear that we were opening stores, they just haven’t been sustainable. Okay, now this is a little scary. However, fear is a figment of imagination. Fear is lack of faith and faith is something we decided early on in our marriage we could not afford to lack. So, we moved forward.

Our next question was, why are they not sustainable? There is a very small percentage of black owned beauty supply stores that are thriving that we pay homage to, but the alarming failure rate in this industry is still something we had to take note of. Here’s what we learned. These “beauty supply” stores that we all have been financing for years are HAIR stores. That may be obvious to some or most, but listen, I’ve only wore hair twice and both times, the stylist provided it, so buying hair wasn’t something I was familiar with. This is when we learned about the major barrier, lack of hair supply.

So boom, we are invested despite knowing the barriers. Despite the odds. We spend the next few months taking classes. This was such an important step. Miseducation was not a barrier we could afford while jumping into an industry that already has barriers. We took classes on accounting, marketing, and retailing. Months with nothing but learning about these key subjects to help us get goings. The education is what gave us the confidence to move forward.

While we were learning, we set up our entity with TN. We learned that suppliers will not even talk to you without proper paperwork. After we became legal TN entity and completed the education portion, we search for our suppliers. Once we identified our suppliers, we move forward with securing a lease.

If took us 7 months from lease signing to open. We face several problems in shipping due to the effects of COVID.

Now that we are open, our plan is to continue to expand inventory, stay consistent with our marketing plan, and focus on customer service.

Steven & Whitney, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Steven and Whitney were both born and raised in Antioch, TN. They have been married for 4 years, together for 9 years, and have two wonderful children. Steven is an alumnus of Antioch High School, the University of Tennessee – Chattanooga (BS), and the University of Memphis (MS). Whitney is an alumna of Cane Ridge High School, the University of Tennessee- Chattanooga, and a TN licensed real estate agent. They decided to open Crown Love, because they saw a need for black representation in the beauty supply industry in Antioch.

We sell hair, chemicals, hair equipment, and accessories. We are different because we prioritize customer service and basic level education on products. We are not licensed stylist, but we have the experience of using these products.

We are proud of the progress we have made this far. We have expanded our inventory 100%. We started with about 1100 different products, we now have over 2200 different products.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We face several delays getting open. COVID put a heavy burden on shipping, it took several months to receive our orders. The biggest demonstration on our resilience was moving forward despite all the ”no’s” we were told. As I said before, hair is the money maker in this industry, and the reason it’s hard to own a hair store is because distributors and manufactures will not sell to you because of the relationship they have built with competitors. We were able to press forward for accounts and obtain inventory consistantly.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We are married lol. We’ve being knowing of each other since high school. Never really had conversations in school, just knew of each other since we were at the same school. We formally met in the summer of 2012 through mutual friends and have been kicking it ever since. We became best of friends in 2012, it wasn’t until late 2013 that we decided to start dating. We got married in 2018 and now have 2 wonderful children. We did not become official business partners until 2018, when we started a trucking company. We skip several steps in that process, so it did not work how we intended, plus we both agreed we rushed into it. We made a promise that our next venture would not be rushed, and we wouldn’t go into anything blind again. That’s why I adore Crown Love so much. It was put together with so much intention.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.crownlovebeauty.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crownlovebeautysupply/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crownlovebeautysupply