Born and raised in New Orleans, Jesseca Dupart successfully built an empire betting on herself with her Kaleidoscope brand’s $100,000 monthly sales increasing a tenfold in just four years.
In your career you have worn many, many hats. Would you say the beauty industry with your Kaleidoscope brand is your favorite arena to play in? If not, what’s your favorite arena?
Kaleidoscope Hair Products is my favorite arena to play in because I get to live out my little girlness through creativity and marketing with this particular brand.
You recently launched your UniKorn collection. Why is the collection so important for women who like to be versatile with their hair styling?
I am a woman that likes to change my hair a lot. The UniKorn collection was created for people that like to express themselves through their art and hair expression. People who like to go through many changes. Our UniKorn collection is focused on antibreakage because often times when you switch your hair up a lot, you have the issues with breakage.
Let’s backtrack just a little bit! What was it about the hair and beauty industry that made you want to dive headfirst into it? Why not fashion or music?
Since I was a child, I loved playing in hair. I never thought of becoming an adult and saying “hey I want to pursue this for money” or anything. When I was about five or six years old, I used to put berets in my father’s hair. Then as I got older, I moved on to Barbie dolls. I was constantly cutting their hair off and creating new styles with their hair. As I started to grow up I started to do my own hair and even my friends hair. So, if you couldn’t tell I liked doing hair. The one thing I honestly did not see myself doing was selling hair products and moving from behind the chair.
Let’s take a moment to talk about social media influence. Do you have any tips for young women who aspire to gain social media influence? What advice would you give to those who want to use their social media influence and use it to build businesses and other brands?
The advice that I would give to somebody that wants to build social media influence is to go into it with a purpose and with a passion; and then with that comes influence. Often times, people actually just go after their dreams and when they’re pursuing their purpose there’s attention that’s given to them and it’s turned into influence. From there, businesses give them more attention. The focus should not necessarily be influence; it should be purpose and impact. So, if you’re talking about impact, that could be a focus. I don’t think it should necessarily be to strive socially to do anything unless it’s within your purpose.
Your hair and beauty brand is just one aspect of your overall brand, why was it important for you to diversify your portfolio and ensure you had your eggs in more than one basket?
Well, for me, some of my businesses were birthed because of my tax bracket and so for tax purposes, which I am very transparent about, I have invested in real estate and real estate appreciates in value. I try to do larger commercial buildings versus multiple residential buildings and then there’s management companies for my personality side of it. When it comes to business, and all entrepreneurs know, they are kind of like the lifeline. It goes up and down, you have highs and lows. If you have three different businesses and one is in its high season, one might be in its slow season. The key thing about that is focusing on one at a time; meaning, one should be a focus and once that starts thriving, you add another one. Do not focus on starting three from the ground up at one time. Focus on one and let it have its legs and let it be moving before you add another one.
Last year you went public with your relationship with Da Brat and it’s been fantastic catching glimpses of how happy you two are together! How do you manage to have a healthy happy relationship while balancing all of your businesses and endeavors? Do you have any advice for other young women seeking to be successful in both business and love?
I have yet to find a balance between business and love, business and family, and business and friendships. Honestly, every single entrepreneur I know or 99% of them have a struggle like this. If anyone has the answer, please tell me because I still don’t know how to balance it out. However, I’m trying and I’m better than I was before.
You always find time to give back to your community, why is that so important to you?
I want to leave this earth knowing that I was a good person. I want to be able to sell my seeds and be something. I don’t want to just be here to have a successful business and not help other people. I think one of my life’s purposes is to help other people and I feel that very strongly in my heart.
You’ve built a multimillion dollar hair care brand in less than 10 years, what’s the secret to investing into your brands while still saving up the coins?
For me, my walk and everybody’s walk are different. My walk was a little bit different. I was a hairstylist, so everything that I made on products, I reinvested into the products. Even stuff that I made while doing hair, I reinvested into products so when I was building my company, I was not skimming off the top, I was not taking profit before time. I actually invested everything back into my company probably about 18 months strong before I took anything from it. I was just really disciplined because I was able to see phenomenal growth and I wanted to be able to support that. There wasn’t anything that I was trained in college for; there wasn’t anything that I learned. It was almost like second nature, “oh let me make sure I make more money this month so I can buy more products, so I can spend some more marketing”. It was almost like an addiction, I wanted to put everything back into the company. I can’t say I was saving because when the money was coming in, I was putting it back into the business and then after, continuing to invest that. We went from making $80,000 our first year to making $800,000 our second year. I think it definitely all paid off.
Black female entrepreneurs have been taking the world by storm over the last few years, what is next for the Jesseca Dupart brand? What can we expect to see as we head into the second quarter of 2021?
In addition to having products sold at Target, Sally’s and other great stores, we recently expanded to Walmart stores as well. We have new things that we’re launching. Kaleidoscope Hair Products will be adding a lot more products, so you have different variations. We are still going to focus on growth. For my personal brand, you will see me more and I also look forward to “Judy Dropping Knowledge”. This will include giving more knowledge to people and actively supporting small businesses. I want my giving to be really intentional this year. I want to be connected to all of the people that have supported Kaleidoscope Hair Products and I want to support them.
Jasmine Osby
