Before the hot summer heat descends to Atlanta, the Brittanee Sim therapist usually does -the thick and curly hair broken in a living room to preserve their healthy mane.
But this year is more expensive. So he will only pay for his teenage daughter and his son to get his summer hairstyles. Not having braid hair “creates more trouble for everything,” said Sims, who is among the tens of millions of women who regularly spend in the black hair care industry.
Now he said, he has to “go home and find out what I will do in my hair in the morning, after going to the gym and is messy with sweating and frizz.”
President Donald Trump’s rates increase the prices of products that many black women consider to be essential, squeezing buyers and stylists even more, as they are with higher inflation and rents.
Much of the synthetic braid hair, human hair for extensions, wigs and fabrics, style tools, braid gel and other products are imported or contained in China, which were the subject of 145% of fare combined in April. India is also a main global source of human hair.
Many black women have types of hair and styles favored in the workplace that require careful attention and can spend hundreds of dollars on the salons each month on extensions, fabrics, wigs and braids.
Associated Press spoke with several experts in the black hair industry, owners of beauty supply and wholesale companies, as well as almost two dozen stylists and black branches, some of whom may have to raise prices even when business has slowed down.
On Thursday, a Federal Appeal Court restored most of the Trump’s rates over the imported goods after a day before a court of three Judges in the United States International Court of Commerce.
Earlier this month, the United States agreed to leave the 145% tax on goods imported from China to 30%, while the two economic superpowers negotiate new trade agreements. Imports from most other countries are facing the initial rate rates of 10%.
Regardless, in the coming months, “they are already fired” for many articles, said Marty Parker, a business professor at the University of Georgia and a supply chain expert who worked in the hair care industry. The costs that companies have been confronted with the ports are resorting to consumers, the low supply worse, and it is unclear what will happen if the negotiations are breaking down.
“Prices increase very quickly and go down very slowly,” said Parker.
Costs increase for Atlanta stylists
Some stylists said they see less customers because prices increase almost everything.
Atlanta stylists pay more for China’s hair. Atlanta Yana Ellis, who also sells products like wigs, paid for an additional $ 245 in shipping for 52 hair packages in March compared to 40 packages in December. Aaniyah Butler said that their shipping costs for human hair doubled from February to May. And Dajiah Blackshear found in early May a beauty supply shop increased the cost of the type of hair he used for years for $ 100.
The shop owner said that he may have to stop selling this hair brand because he has increased so much. Similarly, some wholesale hair stores have had higher costs or are waiting for them in the coming weeks. Even the typical cost of 6 to 10 dollars of a packet of synthetic hair has increased.
Blackshear does not want customers to wear their hair because he likes to ensure the quality. But if the expenses continue to increase, you may have to raise your prices.
“It will be extremely difficult,” he said, especially for customers who “have to make these difficult decisions, between” I make my hair or pay my bills? “”
Janice Lowe, which manages 5 Starr Salon in a neighborhood with lower revenue in southeastern Atlanta, has begun asking customers to wear hair and cannot buy certain products.
“I am left behind from my obligations,” he said.
The british industry for uncertainty
Consultants vary in the amount of prices they will go up, when they will go up and over time, and the full damage to stylists and consumers could be months.
According to Market.us, the global black hair care industry was $ 3.2 billion by 2023, and black women spend six more times in hair care than other ethnicities.
Stylists often acquire some more difficult professional products from door -to -door distributors who buy wholesale companies or larger distributors who buy directly from other countries.
Lowe has seen some of its distributors further faded away, which makes it difficult to obtain professional lines such as the professional brand brand design design, manufactured in Atlanta at the McBride Research Laboratories.
Essential Design is trying to delay price increases until 2026 or 2027 and can resort to layoffs or stop promotions to save money, said President Cornell McBride Jr. Most packaging plastics come from China, but ingredients may come from many places.
“No one wants to put it to the consumer, but the person who pays is the consumer at the end,” said McBride Jr.
Hawa Keita and her mother often charge customers between $ 160 and $ 250 to braid in their store, Eve’s African hair braid at College Park in the south -west of Atlanta. Keita is determined to take losses because her customers “cannot pay at Atlanta prices,” Keita said.
Keita said the cost of a box of 100 packets of China’s braid hair increased for the first time in two years, from $ 250 to $ 300. They order weekly, often multiple boxes. Some companies say that prices will soon increase or run out of stock.
Keita made customers happy is the one who will keep the business in Fleet, Keita said. He smiled as he explained to braid a young woman’s hair for her birthday with a style she suggested.
“When we finished, he gave me the biggest hug and was here shouting and shouting because he only loved his hair,” said Keita.
Price consumers have unfair beauty standards
For many black -American blacks, especially women, to offer -hair care also means facing disadvantaged beauty standards. Georgia State University Law Professor Tanya Washington said recent discoveries on dangerous chemicals in synthetic hair and hair straightening products have caused conversations between black women looking for hairstyles that do not require so many imported products.
But hugging natural hairstyles can be puzzling for women, such as lawyers and secretaries that Washington advises you to have pressure to smooth their hair.
“This causes everyone who does not have straight hair organically, naturally derived at a disadvantage in these spaces,” he said. “I think a definition of professionalism that favors a phenotype – the European phenotype – on all others, it is inappropriate.”
Long -term income disparities between black and white women can also make the highest prices of hair care unsustainable. According to the United States census, from 2023, median home in Atlanta is $ 131,319 for white homes and $ 47,937 for black homes.
It is a problem of inequality that professional hairstyles are aware of the whole country.
The stylist Mitzi Mitchell, owner of Pic One Beauty Services in Pennsylvania, said that he has been provided with certain products and tools for a year in anticipation of price increase.
She wants to avoid “bootleg” products, which are made illegally and are often not so safe, but have become much more prevalent in the market during economic falls.
“I am really aware of my black minority customers because we make a large number of nationalities,” said Mitchell, who is black. “I try to keep the prices low so that we can continue to have the same services, but I know that I will have to consider it.”
#Black #hair #industry #matters #products #China #rates #braids #wigs
Image Source : nypost.com