ABC57 News in South Bend, Ind. covers all of Michiana including St. Joseph, Elkhart, Kosciusko, LaPorte and Marshall counties in Indiana and Berrien, Cass, Van Buren and St. Joseph counties in Mich.
Willie Dearing was tired of the beauty supply store options in the area. For years, she noticed that the personable touch that she and other Black women wanted when shopping for wigs and hair products was simply not there.
Willie Dearing was tired of the beauty supply store options in the area. For years, she noticed that the personable touch that she and other Black women wanted when shopping for wigs and hair products was simply not there.
âThey have everything you would want to look for in a beauty supply store, but they have no personal understanding of what theyâre selling,â Dearing said. âThe people who own the hair stores or sell wigs to Black women, they have cosmetics and things that women wear, but theyâre all men.â
So she began to talk with family and friends about whether they would support a business owned and operated by a Black woman and said she got an overwhelmingly positive response. As a woman in her early 60s, she said she has already had a career and is currently attending Indiana University South Bend and taking poetry classes. But this seemed to be a new adventure and one she increasingly fell in love with.