The Business
Behind MUZE.

The beauty industry has always been built on our hair. Our texture, our techniques, our references, our language. What it has rarely been built on is our ownership. For most of my career, the woman who invented the method was not the woman who held the patent, and the hands that made the look were not the hands that priced it.

MUZE exists to correct that arithmetic in one small, specific place. Not as a statement — as a business. We own the formulas. We choose the manufacturers. We set the price and defend the margin, because margin is what allows a company to survive a bad quarter without selling the thing that makes it itself.

People love the origin story: stylist to Emmy to founder. What they skip is the capital question. There was no fund waiting for a Black woman with a professional haircare idea. The first production run was financed by the chair — by decades of appointments, referrals, and a reputation I protected like inventory. That is how most Black businesses are still built: revenue first, permission never.

The hardest lesson was that excellence is not a growth strategy on its own. You can be the best in the room and still be a line item in someone else's brand. Distribution, formulation, packaging, shipping — the unglamorous middle of the business — is where ownership actually lives. I had to learn to love spreadsheets the way I love sculpting a silhouette.

And I had to learn to build with other founders instead of beside them. The women I trade numbers with — manufacturers, margins, hard failures — have made me more money than any campaign. Black business has always been a network before it was a market. We share the map because someone shared it with us.

So celebrate us in August. Then buy in September. Restock in November. Refer us in February. A month of visibility is lovely; a year of revenue is what builds a house that outlives its founder. That is the only legacy metric I care about.