Urbanbella: Banking on Curls!

By Shadine MΓ©nard

Founder of Urbanbella . Keneesha Hudson . ATL, GA . www.urbanbella.com

Urbanbella is a haven for women with kinky, curly and wavy hair in Atlanta… This is the spot that not only provides hair care, answers and relaxation to its clients, but satisfaction and revenue to its owner, Keneesha Hudson.

As an avid swimmer Keneesha decided to go natural to avoid damaged chemically processed hair: β€œI never regretted my choice, but that’s not to say it wasn’t scary. β€˜Would I still feel feminine?Β  Would my husband like it?’ I realized that if I wanted to feel confident with my new look, I needed to learn more about it.” And that she did, by purchasing, testing and sorting through most β€œcurly” hair products. If there was a product in the store that had curly, kinky and wavy on it, she could tell you if it worked or not and how to use it to your advantage.

Her beautiful hair and the compliments she received about it daily prompted the former financial consultant to want to share her trial and errors with others. In 2004 the Urbanbella website was launched with just an email blast. Its owner started providing tips as well as doing personalized consultations until the demand for her consultations were so great that in 2006 she opened the first Urbanbella store in Buckhead, Atlanta. Keneesha and her husband invested time, money and countless hours of hard work to turn her hobby into a profitable business.

Urbanbella retails Devachan and Jane Carter to name a few

β€œWe truly spent about 2 years building the concept, studying and learning about different hair types and products and how it all fits together,” says Keneesha of her and her husband’s decision to open the physical store. β€œI knew we had to take the retail experience for hair to a higher level and that would require providing the consumer with more knowledge than they were currently getting in today’s retail experience.Β Β We have slowly filtered money in the business overtime by looking at the overall goal and breaking that down into components, so we started with the website which can be a $10,000 investment and a few months later we moved into designing a store…Our approach has been to take these projects on slowly and one at a time.”

According to her this store now has over 30 salon appointments and 200 retail customers per week. Not bad for what started as a quest to make her own natural hair look fab.

The key to Urbanbella’s success is that inside its bright blue walls with pink furniture, zebra-print rugs and hanging chandeliers, it makes every girl feel like a celebrity and its concept is unlike any other. It starts with a β€œhair education”: a one-on-one consultation, a hair and scalp massage, explanation of the best products for them as well as the purchase of those products for the customer’s use.

Keneesha Hudson shines brightly because she rocks her natural beauty and brings it out in others while growing financially. β€œTry as hard as possible to think outside of the boxβ€”find that empty niche and fill it!” Now that’s a smart woman!