In April 2020, Shirin Senegal called nearly 100 barber and beauty shops in Long Beach.
Ryan Grier, owner of North Star Cuts in North Long Beach, received one of those calls.
“Shirin is just crazy. She just called me out of nowhere,” Grier said. “I think I had my business number on Google. I don’t know how she got my number to this day.”
Just a month earlier, Long Beach imposed its first health order shutting down non-essential businesses like hair salons and barbershops. The City had confirmed 15 total cases of COVID-19.
Senegal was calling barber and beauty shops across the city to ask if they needed help applying for business grants or promoting their shops in the wake of mass closures.
“I was kind of laughing at the skies because in my nine years being here, [a grant] was nowhere to be found for the barbershop or tools to promote the business,” Grier said. “I’ve always done that on my own. I never really had the help to say ‘Hey do this, you can pull more people in’ or “Fill this out, you can get a grant.’”
Senegal had experience applying for grants. Her nonprofit Ronnie’s House services formerly incarcerated people by supporting their re-entry through mental health support, family support services, one-on-one coaching and financial literacy courses.
Just one year prior to the pandemic, she helped found Accelerate Uptown, the City’s first business accelerator for women and minority-owned businesses.
When the City shut down personal care services, she saw how the strain would affect the beauty industry, a hub for brown, Black and women-owned businesses. The barber industry is sometimes home to previously incarcerated, justice-impacted people—the same people she’d been helping re-enter society through her nonprofit work.
“They’d never gotten any grants,” Senegal said. “Not one of them we helped get funding had ever gotten a penny from the City.”
She kept calling businesses.
Tina Obaid, owner of Elation Hair on Atlantic Avenue, was struggling at the time.
“All my stylists all went back home. I lost my lash techs. Basically, I lost everyone who worked in my salon,” Obaid said. “I was at a halt on my business. I had to start figuring out other ways that might change my business model. I couldn’t even make any kind of income. I was really scared because I don’t have a lot of money saved, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through the pandemic.”
Ronnie’s House helped her apply for grants to market her business. She received a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan. She got money to cover her rent.
She said Senegal helped her build a “strong foundation,” from the structure of her business to tax documentation to trademarking. When her salon shut down, Senegal helped her pivot to online sales.
“I got a lot of mentoring, because as a business owner, you don’t have anyone to coach you in the right direction,” Obaid said.
The barber and beauty industry was hit hard by the pandemic. As restaurants re-opened with health guidelines and social distancing in place, personal care services remained closed. Both Elation Hair and North Star Cuts were closed for the better part of a year.
Ricky Thomas, owner of Bladez Barber Shop, had finished 2019 strong. His five-year-old shop on Artesia Boulevard serviced members of the Golden State Warriors and celebrity rappers.
“I knew one day I wanted to own a business,” Thomas said. He ended up buying the same shop he went to as a kid. “It’s just something I fell into, and then I started to love it.”
But when the pandemic hit, he wasn’t sure if his business would survive.
“There were so many times of uncertainty, not knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to do it,” he said. “We were closed for almost a year. We were one of the industries that got hit the hardest.”
He, too, received a call from Senegal. She helped him set up a website for his products and secured over $10,000 in grants for his shop, just enough to stay afloat through the closures.
But he’s still worried about the future.
“I feel like we could close again any day,” Thomas said. “Without even a closure, people aren’t getting haircuts as much because they don’t want to be in close contact with barbers.”
Senegal wants to make sure that barbers and beauty shops across Long Beach know that someone is advocating for their success.
“Barbershops and hair salons are cultural hubs. They distribute information, health information, they were such a big part of our civil rights movement,” Senegal said. “During the pandemic, they were partners with us in distributing COVID information, PPE material, posting information to get to our communities as they were going through their struggle.”
When Long Beach anticipated millions in federal and state funds to support local businesses, Senegal rallied members of the barber and beauty industry to advocate for a piece of the pie. An online petition gained 127 signatures in a few days.
It was barber Manny Navarro’s first council meeting. He spoke during public comment urging the council to allocate recovery funds to his industry.
“It was nerve-wracking. I’ve never done that before. But you know, it’s cool. It’s cool to know that our voice can be heard,” Navarro, owner of 1984 Barbershop, said. “I think it’s important to be together as a team, as the same industry, and make it work, be supportive to each other.”
The Long Beach City Council allocated $5 million to personal care services and fitness centers (gym owners came out in droves to advocate for funding and reopening during 2020 council meetings).
The impact of their organizing made Senegal realize how much could be won for the industry if they were organized.
“Everyone’s voice needs to be at the table right now, because this is a major economic recovery,” Senegal said.
By comparison, the Long Beach Restaurant Association, which had 120 members as of December 2020, won $5 million specifically for restaurants a week prior. They also won reimbursements for City permit and licensing fees, technology grants and outdoor dining grants at different times throughout the pandemic.
Longstanding inequalities—influenced by race, income, language access and education—were “magnified in business” during the pandemic, she said.
The CSULB’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is partnering with Senegal to help with programming and technical support for the program. The two have partnered together in the past. In this collaboration, they’ll help members with things like strengthening their relationships with banks and creating roadmaps for their business goals.
“We want to bring [our] expertise from the university into the community and help individuals achieve their dreams,” said Dr. Wade Martin, director of the institute.
He noted that systematic racism and biases against minority- and women-owned businesses can prevent business owners from fully realizing their entrepreneurial potential.
“Long Beach is a great place that celebrates its diversity, but there are still built-in challenges institutionally that need to need to be overcome,” Martin said. “Working with the startup community, the small business community, and community-based organizations and nonprofits like Ronnie’s House—this is a step in the right direction.”
Senegal said she wants to equalize the playing field by offering marketing assistance, technical support, landlord-tenant mediation, e-commerce, business advice and collective advocacy on behalf of the industry.
This week, that goal culminated in the debut of Long Beach’s first Barber and Beauty Association.
Earlier this week, Navarro joined 30 other members of the newly-formed association.
The owners of Elation Hair, North Star Cuts and Bladez Barber Shop are all on the board of directors.
“I feel like the barbers weren’t being heard. We needed a voice,” Thomas said. “I feel like I wanted to be one of those voices to stand up and represent the barber association to let people know or let the city know what we need as barbers and beauty shop owners.”
They all have similar reasons for joining the board.
Obaid wants to “make sure everyone has equal access to resources and a chance to not just survive, but thrive.”
Grier wants to share knowledge with fellow barbers to be “a guiding light” through the uncertain future of the pandemic.
And though the association is in its fledgling form, Senegal is revving up. In the coming year, she hopes to hold a convention for industry leaders to show off their products. She’s keeping an eye on upcoming grants, and she continues to call barbers and beauty shops.
“I really believe that if we preserve our barbershops and hair salons, as cultural hubs, we can build safer communities, healthier communities,” she said. “We need to say, ‘Wait a minute, entrepreneurs are born out of these barbershops.’ […] They’re able to serve the community in so many ways. It’s beyond a haircut.”
