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From the start, it seems, Joanne McCain-Johnson was preparing for a career in hair care.
"When I was a little girl," she recalled with a smile, "I would comb my grandfather's hair, and I'd have a million of those little plastic barrettes in it."
Her styling proclivity also explains why her dolls were, say, uniquely shorn.
It further explains why, as a high school kid, her home was visited by college girls, looking to have their hair done by her.
"I'd find out later I was doing everything wrong," McCain-Johnson admitted, "but it looked good."
As she spoke, the Southside High School graduate -- whose own locks are long and luxuriant looking -- was seated in her McGalliard Road salon, Simply Red Hair Care. Designed around a black, white and red color scheme, it's a warm-looking place with the requisite magazines, racks of curling irons and the small sign that reminds her overly optimistic customers, "I'm a beautician, not a magician!"
Bought by her in 1988, its name is a testament to its owner's logical turn of mind.
"My nickname is Red," she noted, "and I provide simple, normal hair care."
Still, the salon is extraordinarily special to its owner on several important levels, the first being that it represents a goal achieved.
"I wanted to open a shop," she said, discussing the 10 earlier years she spent working as a "qualified medical assistant" at Westminster Village while offering perms and such out of her own kitchen. "That was always my dream. I knew what I wanted to do. ... The Lord just opened up that door."
Having trained for the medical profession at Ivy Tech, she enrolled in PJ's College of Cosmetology, and with a passion.
"I went straight through," she said. "I was out of there in 10-and-a-half months."
Her graduation was followed by a stint at a local shop, in order to qualify for her manager's license.
Owning her own shop, she added, has worked out better than she could have hoped.
"I am blessed with a good clientele," she said, as she worked her fingers through her hair in preparation for some photographs. "I have been truly blessed."
She dealt with hostility
Early on, though, her move was not without stress.
Today, the active Union Missionary Baptist Church member believes hers is the only black-owned business along that busy city thoroughfare. Twenty years ago, some of her neighbors weren't exactly thrilled that she was taking over the shop, with some pointed, bigoted comments and attitudes announcing their hostility.
"I did have struggles here," said the mother of three and grandmother of five, who is a friendly, confident, effusive woman. "But they've come around. I have survived the storm."
In fact, things at the shop have worked out well enough that the owner and stylist has begun looking beyond these days to the future.
"I can't stand behind this chair for the rest of my life," she said.
The answer to avoiding that might be her own line of hair-care products that she is now marketing, SR Originals. They were developed over time in partnership with a chemist she met at a hair show, and unveiled last July at Indy Black Expo.
"I couldn't find the product that I wanted," she said, of what spurred her quest for success with the chemist. "She'd mix some stuff and send it to me."
While things like shampoo, conditioner and setting lotion are part of her package of products, it's her serum that is the centerpiece of the line.
"Ethnic people have hair that's dry by nature," she said, discussing what led to the development of this moistening hair-control product, the only one in her line that she sells on its own. "It's just the way that God made us."
These days, McCain-Johnson is often on the road, preaching its benefits.
"I'm going city to city and just getting my word out there," she said, adding that her dream now is to see it sold on the QVC shopping network.
Women who are blessed
That, obviously, could be a financial windfall for her.
In the meantime, however, she keeps working to satisfy her customers, plus provide beauty services to some women who can't often afford them -- YWCA residents, Better Way residents and others.
Under her Daymaker program, McCain-Johnson brings together stylists, masseurs, makeup artists, fitness experts and clothing coordinators for the recipients, who write essays to avail themselves of the opportunity to work with these folks. Those selected attend two related classes, then go to various stations to be primped and pampered.
The next such event is scheduled for March 8.
The women on the receiving end, it seems sure, will be truly blessed by the event.
The question that McCain-Johnson raises, however, is just who are the women on the receiving end?
"We thought we were going there to bless them," she said with a smile, recalling last year's event. "But man, we were so blessed. We left there energized with the fact that we had made a difference." |
