DOMINICANS DO IT BETTER? HAIR THAT IS....

Delshawn Rollins once trusted only fellow African-Americans with the delicate task of styling and straightening her tightly curled brown hair.

But that meant enduring hours of salon gossip, ordered-in lunch (and sometimes dinner, too) and occasional mishaps, like the time the ends of her hair snapped off after she had it dyed.

Fed up, the 35-year-old respiratory therapist last fall pulled out a flier she had for a new salon that promised to "work magic" using "Dominican styling." She was in and out of The Hair Co. USA, which displays the Dominican flag in the front window, within two hours, sporting a straight, feathery "do" for $20 less than she had been paying her old stylist.

"My hair has this flow," she says. People ask where she has it done.

Armed with a blow dryer and brush, deft wrist action and shrewd promotional tactics, immigrants from the Dominican Republic are snipping away market share from African-American stylists whose mastery of black women's hair ensured for generations that their customers wouldn't, or couldn't, leave them. Promises of seemingly healthier hair, swifter service and far lower prices are wooing away a growing number of black women.

Ms. Rollins and most other African-American women require a chemical "relaxer" to straighten their hair and get touch-up treatments every six weeks or so. She and many other customers say another benefit of the Dominican technique is that it extends the life of straightening chemicals, thus reducing the frequency of application and potentially harmful effects.

The defections have infuriated African-American stylists who insist that their methods are safe and that they are more highly trained than the Dominicans are. "It's hard enough in these times, but they are undercutting our prices, even passing out fliers to our own clients," complains Atlanta hairdresser Jannifer Jackson, whose cancellations and no-shows began piling up once a Dominican salon opened about a mile away last summer.

Emily Martinez, a stylist at Sintia's Dominican Salon in Landover, Md., demonstrates the Dominican blowout.

Many traditional black stylists accuse Dominicans of misrepresenting their services as "natural" because nearly all Dominican salons perform relaxer touch-ups. Traditionalists say the "Dominican blowout" technique can cause severe hair breakage. Both sorts of stylists wash, set hair in rollers and seat customers under big dryers.

African-American stylists typically use a curling iron to unfurl the hair, while Dominicans use a two-handed method of unraveling the strands with a round brush, followed by a blow dryer in the other hand to smooth the curl to a straight finish. Dominicans do so by pulling from the hair root, often forcefully. That, along with applying the second round of intense heat, leads to breakage, say black stylists and some customers.

"Bad Boy" Romeo Crews, a prominent and outspoken black stylist in Atlanta, has no fear of the blowout. "Let me tell you," he says, "they are helping my business because people are coming to me after the Dominicans make their hair fall out."

Dominican stylists deny the accusations. The majority of Dominicans are themselves black, and like African-Americans, they developed their skills by styling their own hair. "We have stylists—black stylists—all the time calling and asking to come and train with us," boasts Alfredo Rhoden, co-owner of Dominican Hair Salon by Massiel in suburban Atlanta.

The financial impact of the Dominican incursion on black American salons is hard to gauge. Sales volume isn't tracked by the race or ethnicity of salon owners. But industry experts, salon owners and stylists say the impact is indisputable. A fixture in New York City since the 1980s, Dominicans now are rapidly expanding to other U.S. cities.
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U.S. salon services generated $50.3 billion in 2009 revenue, mostly from small, independently owned shops, according to industry research firm Professional Consultants & Resources. Most black salons are independently owned, with self-employed stylists who rent booths from shop owners. Black women overwhelmingly outnumber other consumers of "ethnic" hair products, which recorded a 3.2% sales increase in 2009, to $1.5 billion, despite a decline in sales of hair-care products overall, according to consumer research group Packaged Facts. U.S. sales of all hair-care products totaled $9.7 billion last year, says market research outfit Kline & Co.

New Jersey stylist and barber Gina Brydie formed the National Black Cosmetology Association last year to help salon owners strengthen their businesses against the recession and the increasing Dominican competition.

"We have Asians coming in with the beauty supplies and Dominicans coming in and taking over our industry," says Ms. Brydie, 39 years old and 20 years in the business. Salons and barber shops are a proud touchstone for blacks in part because they were among the earliest black-owned businesses, providing one of few paths to economic advancement after slavery. By the early 1900s, black entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker had become a self-made millionaire by making hair and beauty products for blacks.

Now, rather than trying to beat the Dominicans, some African-American business owners are joining them. Jennifer Drew started RoundBrushHair.com in 2007 to help Dominican salons market to blacks after she switched to the blowout and saw curiosity budding among black women.

The RoundBrushHair.com database has grown to include several hundred Dominican salons, from Sun Valley, Calif., to Chicago to Boston. Almost all opened in the past five years, Ms. Drew says. It includes 80 salons in metropolitan Washington, 95 in Georgia, 15 in Charlotte, N.C., and seven in Houston.

"Some black stylists hate on me, think I've crossed over to the other side," says Ms. Drew, who also sells hair products manufactured in the Dominican Republic to black-owned salons.

The salon to which Ms. Rollins defected is doing well. Owner Monica Clark, who is African-American, opened the shop in 2008 as a traditional black salon. But business was slow and when faced with closing a few months later, she replaced her stylists with Dominicans, brushed up on her Spanish, redecorated, reduced her prices by $10 and renamed her shop The Hair Company USA Dominican Hair Salon. She's playing merengue music now on the stereo. She says client volume has increased by 60% and sales have tripled.