Founded in 2013 by African American entrepreneur Diishan Imira, 38, Mayvenn is the only venture-backed startup to take aim at the $6 billion U. S. market for human-hair extensions.
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Before Mayvenn launched, black women bought their hair mostly from Korean-controlled beauty-supply stores. “All the money was flowing outside the black community,” says Imira, who’s dressed in a dark gray T-shirt, gray sweatpants and spotless gray Nikes with no socks. He’s sitting in front of a Mac laptop and a 27-inch monitor in his office in downtown Oakland, California. Aside from two cases of Hennessy VSOP stacked by the door, a gift from a friend, the gray-carpeted office is bare.
That’s when L.A. stylist Reina Butler, a surrogate sister who had shared a home with his family in Oakland, asked him to find her a Chinese hair supplier. In 2012, he flew to China and found that human hair was a great export. Light and compact, it was cheap to ship, and retail markups ran as high as 400%. He checked U.S. Customs figures and estimated the U.S. market was worth $5 billion to $6 billion.
One of them was David Shen, a partner at seed investing firm Launch Capital. Imira took him to a salon in Oakland and two Korean-run beauty-supply stores. “I was incredulous,” Shen says. “I loved that Diishan knew this business and was willing to put the time and effort and knowledge into disrupting it.”
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