Schools
MU Extension In JeffCo: Black Female Entrepreneur 'Being The Change,' Locs Of Glory - St. Louis, MO
"Business was picking up, and there weren't a lot of people in St. Louis providing the niche service I was providing," Stigers said.
January 17, 2022
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Tameka Stigers is passionate about seeing more Black-owned businesses serving the needs of the Black community.
“We [Blacks] are consumers,” Stigers said. “We’re always consuming and not owning. We have to change that.”
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Stigers is being the change.
Awarded the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2019 Minority-Owned Small Business of the Year in her Missouri district, Stigers, owner of Locs of Glory salon and spa in St. Louis, Missouri, went on to start two more businesses in 2021.
Black Beauty Supply is on Delmar Boulevard less than 100 feet from Locs of Glory. Stigers’ new Locs of Glory salon is a bit farther away — in Ghana, West Africa.
Stigers began doing hair out of her home as a sideline while pursuing a master’s degree at Saint Louis University. It was just supposed to be something to do to earn some money until she finished school and began a career in public health.
“It turned out to be way more than that,” Stigers said.
After a brief stint on the job market postgraduation, she decided to keep doing hair.
“Business was picking up, and there weren’t a lot of people in St. Louis providing the niche service I was providing,” Stigers said.
That niche service was natural hair care for Black people by Black people, featuring Sisterlocks, a unique styling technique for textured hair.
When Stigers decided to incorporate Locs of Glory in 2009, she went to Grace Hill Women’s Business Center, a U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) resource partner, to learn more about running a business. There, Stigers learned about the numbers — profit and loss and capital — and she developed a business plan.
Initially, Stigers ran the salon from her home. It went from the basement to a bedroom to the remodeled back porch. After receiving a (7a) loan from the SBA in 2016, Stigers was able to get a storefront and relocated Locs of Glory to a 3,000-square-foot building.
It was in 2019 while she was participating in the SBA’s Emerging Leaders Initiative that Stigers met a business specialist with the Missouri Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in St. Louis and began a one-on-one mentorship.
“Then COVID happened and shut everything down,” Stigers said.
This press release was produced by the MU Extension in Jefferson County. The views expressed here are the author’s own.