Bo Tshepe

The creative mind behind The Braids Company has spent many years in the hair and beauty industry, but above all else, she's a mother to two black girls. What started as frustration when she tried to give them an experience that reflected the beauty and majesty of black hair, grew into a questioning of why the experience had not changed much from the sparse and plain experience of her childhood.

"My first experience at a hair salon was a negative, painful one. As a young girl with 4c hair, the whole experience was about heating and straightening my hair into submission. After hours, my hair was then deemed as worthy of braids.

When it came time to give my daughters their first salon experience, we were so far removed from the collective black experience, that the first attempt to introduce them to our world felt purely transactional and in a lot of ways, intimidating.

It felt like such a lacklustre way to welcome them into a new world of creativity and self-discovery.

I wanted something more for my girls. An experience that didn't feel so foreign and out of place with their bodies and their environment.

So I set out to redefine that experience for myself and for women and girls like me. I wanted them to get excited, to look forward to a new style and new ways to be creative.

‘The Braids Company isn’t designed to be a departure from our culture and heritage. I designed it to be a kind of homecoming; an experience befitting of the richness of our culture, heritage and undeniable style.’