← PHOTO GALLERY: The Business of Black Haircare

EdGaryGardner2

By Sasha King | Published April 25, 2011 | Full size is 500 × 320 pixels

In 1989, Soft Sheen is named BE Company of the Year, promoting its audacious goal of selling grooming products to a billion blacks worldwide. It becomes the nation’s sixth largest black-owned business through M&A: It acquired 66% of Dyke and Dryden, a London-based distributor and one of the United Kingdom’s largest black-owned businesses to expand its reach in Africa and Europe as well as created a joint venture with Jamaican businessmen to construct a plant to produce products for the Caribbean and Latin America. To further increase market share, it also bought Newark, New Jersey-based Alaion Products, a producer of low-cost haircare products for men. (Image: Edward and Gary Gardner, Black Enterprise, June 1989)

In 1989, Soft Sheen is named BE Company of the Year, promoting its audacious goal…