Beloved Black-owned barbershop No Grease turns 25

What’s happening: No Grease! will launch a crowdfunding campaign on June 24 (a link will become available then), to raise $2.5 million to develop an app and open new locations and barber schools.

• Plus they’re developing an app with Charlotte-based developer Trox Tech. They expect development to take approximately 12 months, and then they will begin testing it. Eventually they plan to develop a full software.
• Ultimately they hope to take the company public, but a timeline hasn’t been established.

Driving the news: They’ll also host a panel on June 22 at Studio 229 at Brevard at Brooklyn Collective (which sits in today’s Second Ward, which was once a thriving Black neighborhood called Brooklyn). That event is from 5pm until 10pm, and will involve a discussion on entrepreneurship in Black and brown communities with founders and twin brothers Damian and Jermaine Johnson as keynote speakers.

• “Twenty-five years, it’s been a masterclass,” Damian told me. “We started off as two people who love the craft and the art of barbering, [and] we had to fall in love with the craft and the art of business.”

Why it matters: No Grease! has grown with Charlotte, from the first store in June 1997 to a barber school in August of 2003 to their first franchise location in 2017 to 13 locations today.

Yes, but: The Johnsons have become successful in spite of challenges many Black-owned businesses face. Once, they took out a loan for around $300,000 and were given a 14% interest rate, which would later be rectified and dropped by 10%. And last year SouthPark Mall tried to terminate their lease less than two months in, but a public outcry led to SouthPark reversing course, and if you go to the mall today, you’ll still find Knights of the Razor.

• “If we were two young white men in the barber industry doing what we’ve done, we’d have been millionaires now,” Jermaine told Axios’ Michael Graff in 2021.

What’s next: Expansion is the name of the game. The latest location opened in Maryland over Memorial Day weekend, bringing the business to six corporate locations and seven franchise operations across North and South Carolina, plus Georgia and Maryland.

• Damian told me they hope to have their 14th location within a year, but he’s uncertain whether it will be corporate or a franchise location.
• Franchise owner Edmund Washington, who owns two No Grease! barbershops and told me last fall he wants to own more locations than the founders, recently told me he’s eyeing Houston, Texas for No. 14.
• “We’ve got a little family competition going on,” Damian told me with a laugh.