Asana Beauty
What does your company do?
Asana Beauty is not your average hair salon, it is a high-end dreadlocks and natural hair salon that is based in Cape Town, South Africa. It was opened in August 2021 by two young black women, Gugu Nonjinge and Nomahlubi Hewu, to suit a contemporary woman's lifestyle. Like the majority of South African youth, we, as the founders of ASANA, turned to entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and to create economic activity. Since opening our doors, we have employed 10 young black women.
Our main goal is to offer more than just hair care and styling. As a result, one of our core objectives is to create a community and sisterhood that is a safe space and also a conducive platform for knowledge sharing.
What is your biggest success?
Our biggest success has been growing our client base to reach even the black girls who have white adoptive parents. In the past year, we have also moved to a bigger salon in order to accommodate the large number of clients we get and have enough space to provide workshops, particularly for moms on how black natural hair needs to be treated.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Our biggest challenge was funding and accessing capital, so we resorted to funding the business from our own pockets, which wasn’t easy. Now that we have started the business successfully, we require funding for scaling, additional equipment and fittings and to upgrade our business infrastructure.
Marketing has also been our challenge as a small business, especially to ensure that we are finding new customers, retaining current ones, managing resources, and keeping up with trends.
