Deante’ Kyle

Would I ever be where you are?

I think a lot of the psychology around our ideas on business is that we don't sell to corporations, that we keep it in the family.

We continue a legacy of family businesses.

Sounds real nice.

Yeah, and that's the big but.

Now, how do you contend with that, with selling versus having a product that black people specifically can't count on to be

healthy for their hair and things like that because once you sell off you don't have any control over the product and it can a lot of times it gets involved in toxic chemicals being put in it and these are things people putting directly into their head so how do you contend with that that part of it do you maintain ownership so you know that your customer is getting a healthy product it depends on what kind of deal you have it depends on the person who's buying it and i would imagine that if someone's coming with

If you think that there's a contingency that could be had in a deal where you sell and you say, hey, a contingency upon selling this is that you have to maintain the integrity of the product.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I think a big part of our society, especially, you know, just understanding that there's, like, really no way to escape capitalism, and we have people who, like,

Me and you being business owners are capitalists in this society, but we are very community-oriented.

And when we get to, like, venture capitalists and, like, staunch capitalists, they don't care about community at all.

So I think that's the point.

That's kind of the place where I'm at.

And probably what has kept you as an independent owner is that you know that the care has to be for the community first.

The product has to be for the community first.

And some of these people...

are approached maybe five, ten years into the business and maybe are just now scaling.

And then they sell right then and there.

And I think that's where most people feel duped.