My name is Shamaine, and I immigrated to Canada in Nov 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In late February to early March, we moved to New Brunswick. That's New Brunswick in Canada, not in New Jersey. When I moved to Canada with my husband, I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't think I would ever find myself living in a place where most people don't look like me. It was a culture shock for me, and what made it worse was not having access to haircare products or people who knew how to care for my hair. In the Southern US, hair is a part of the Black culture, and we take pride in keeping our hair healthy and styled. My momma did not play about my hair y'all, I don't know how often other kids got their hair done but, I grew up getting my hair done every two weeks.
Back to why I founded Melanated Beauty Depot (MBD), I grew tired of going to the local beauty supply store owned by a giant corporation that lacked in many product types of hair care products for my textured hair. I found that a lot of the products in the store catered to people with straight hair and people who enjoy coloring their hair. There is nothing wrong with that except that hair products for Black people only took up space on half an isle. Yes, this is a predominately White area, BUT much of the international university students and immigrants are descendants of the Afro-Diaspora. Therefore, I felt the least I could do is open a beauty supply store online because brick-and-mortar is too expensive for this small business' pockets and with these New Brunswick taxes, for now, and supply Black people (and all mixes of melanin-expressing folks alike) with hair care products they need in one place. At MBD, we understand that the hair struggle is real in rural areas, and we are procuring new products, day by day, to bring to our store to ship to your home.