January 30, 2017

Meet Debra Shigley of Colour in Atlanta

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Debra Shigley.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Debra. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I remember being a lawyer in DC and going to a Dominican Salon on a Saturday. It was packed, with a mile long wait list, no concept of an actual “appointment”, and ended up taking 7 hours for a simple wash and set. I’m there sweating under the dryer and thought, there has got to be a better way! No one has time for this! Over the next decade, I watched companies like Drybar pop up, but still not serve a woman like me who had super curly hair. When my family moved abroad to Mexico City for my husband’s work with Coca-Cola in May 2014, I decided to start doing the legwork on Colour. I went to beauty school in fluent Spanish there (while pregnant with my 4th child!). I did our first iterative test– I flew back to Atlanta for a weekend Sept 2014, recruited a team of stylists and emailed fifty black friends, do you want an appointment at home? The response was incredible. So, I did some more testing, started looking for a co-founder and linked up with Stephanie, moved back to Atlanta August 2015, ran a pilot November 2015, launched May 2016.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We’re just getting started. Every day is an adventure.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We do on-demand hairstyling geared toward women of color. Think Uber, for black hair care. Say a client wants to have her hair done before an important work presentation and needs to get it done at 7 am. But her salon is closed, or her favorite stylist is booked. She would go on our app, choose a hairstyle, date and time for her appointment. She washes her hair and the stylist arrives at the appointed time. Payment is transacted through the app. It’s seamless and convenient, and we’re experts in African-American textured hair– including natural hair, relaxed hair, and extensions. She can feel confident that all of our stylists are vetted and have a no-hair-is-too-difficult-attitude and technique level. Our objective is to make her life easier so that she never has to worry about her hair again.

We’re proudest that we have a 98% positive rating from our customers on our services. They tell us we’ve literally changed their lives. We’re equally proud that our freelance stylists love working with Colour. They enjoy the flexible income, and opportunities to expand their craft and career through Colour assignments and ongoing education.

What were you like growing up?
Growing up I was a straight-A student, but I was a bit of a rebel. Think always turning in school papers after the deadline, skipping class, writing letters to the principal or the school paper trying to shake things up when there were injustices. I got over the missed deadlines thing when I worked full time while going to law school at night in my 20s– that experience definitely straightened all tendencies to procrastinate out of me! But I held onto had a spirit of coloring outside the lines. Interest wise, I was a serious ballet dancer and did a lot of theater. I loved writing and was very enterprising. I always had some sort of money making side gig. I was the best babysitter on the block, with a babysitters bag full of games and glitter. I paid off my credit card debt after college selling used makeup on Ebay (yes, people buy it).

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