‘The New Southern Belle’ Latrice Rogers Demonstrates that Mississippi can be Fertile Ground for Entrepreneurial Success by Aliyah Veal
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year into her business, she made her first million, she said. “It was at that moment where I knew it wasn’t that hard of a choice, basically. I had to figure out which worked better, and my hobby at that time was what worked for me,” Rogers said. ‘Vending Machines and Hair Care’ After Goddess Lengths Virgin Hair started to take off, Latrice’s next step was acquiring a storefront, an idea that a Target security guard gave her, she said. She moved into a small space off McWillie Drive for
about $300 a month. Around this same time, she partnered with her alma mater, Jackson State University, to become a vendor for the school’s student campus card. “When you go to college, you really don’t have any money, which is why the JSU supercard is so important. It’s the only money that’s accessible, and the thing about the campus cards is it’s only certain vendors who take it,” Rogers explained about the business move. The partnership with the school was a really lucrative business that helped her grow to a bigger storefront on Northside Sterling Photography
March 31 - April 27, 2021 • jfp.ms
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atrice Rogers was always told that going to school to become an attorney or doctor would equate to success, so that’s what she did. She graduated from Canton High School, enrolled at Jackson State University and obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology in 2010. But Rogers, like many college graduates, struggled to find a job in her field after graduation. After four long years of studying biology, she found herself working at Office Depot making $8 an hour. The Canton native couldn’t wrap her mind around all the hard work she put into leaving her hometown and attending college only to ultimately end up making not even a dollar above minimum wage. It didn’t make sense, she said. “It was that moment where I was like, ‘Something has to give.’ Hair was always a fascination with me, doing makeup; I was just always into it. If you would have known me back in a day and saw me, the first thing you would have probably noticed was my hair,” Rogers told the Jackson Free Press. Rogers wouldn’t be styling hair, though, but creating a hair extensions brand, Goddess Lengths Virgin Hair, that would ultimately make her a multimillionaire. She said she would wake up and go to sleep with hair on her mind, so she started researching different types of hair. “I had little money, so I had to be careful what I buy and that’s where research came in. I bought a few batches of hair, and my friend was a hairstylist, so she tested the hair out on her(self) and on me,” the business mogul said. Rogers and her friend tested the longevity of the hair, the shedding, the movement of the hair, which would ultimately help her determine whether the hair would be good quality or not. After various tests, she found the perfect hair and started selling it. “I would be at Target, and I would literally have a line wrapped around the car with people walking to my car, ready to purchase hair. And I’m sitting in the car passing bundles out the window,” Rogers remembered. In 2013, Rogers went from making $75 a day to thousands of dollars a day. A
Latrice Rogers made her first $1 million within a year of opening her business.
Drive with a retail and salon side. And next came one of her most creative ventures, a hair vending machine, which was the brainchild of Rogers and her husband, Clifton Rogers. The idea spawned from the need to provide customer service at any time— during a point when customers would call her phone at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. to buy hair extensions, she said. She and her husband decided to put the vending machine in Northpark Mall, where the mall opens as early as 5 a.m. and closes as late as 11 p.m. “The opening day of the vending machine, it was like hundreds of people lined up. The guy that was over the mall had to call in security guards. Of course, at this point, I’m thinking I’m about to get put out of the mall,” Rogers said. “He was turning red in the face because he’d never seen anything like that. When Jordans come out, you know how their line is, but my line was a lot longer than the Jordan line,” she said. The head of the mall recorded the event and called her into his office. He had sent the recording to the CFO of the mall and they were so amazed by the turnout that they offered her the opportunity to put her vending machines in other malls. She now has her hair vending machines in Mississippi and Tennessee, she said. “A lot of people look at selling hair and think it is a hobby. You’re not the traditional lawyer, doctor or nurse. But it’s so much that goes into the backend of actually making a successful business and developing it into a multimillion dollar business,” she said. Recently, Rogers expanded her brand past hair extensions with the launch of her haircare line, Esensual Beauty. The line includes shampoo, conditioner, hair-care serum, edge tamer and hair masks with other products still developing, the businesswoman said. Weaves are Rogers’ go-to hairstyle, but she wasn’t really taking care of her hair, which would result in little patches in her head, she said. She used her science degree and began mixing different chemical-free, organic ingredients that helped to grow her hair back stronger and healthier. “I gave them to my mom (and) my sisters, and they’re telling me how amaz-
