All A Board

Going gaga for kids' hair-care products.

As sales representatives for the country's top ethnic hair-care lines, Lamont Kennerly, 38, and Frank Conwell, 46, saw a niche that had yet to be filled: ethnic hair-care products for babies.

Business was slowing for the pair's sales brokerage firm in 1991 as more companies moved their sales staffs in-house. So Kennerly and Conwell rolled up their sleeves and got to work launching Anika Laboratories Inc., manufacturer of Soft & Precious hair and skin products specially formulated for black babies.

"We did it our way," says Kennerly, proud that they financed the company themselves from day one. "It gave us a little more flexibility."

The founders' backgrounds in the industry helped everything come together for Anika; a chemist they'd met at a former job was hired to help develop the shampoo.

"Once you talk to one person, they lead you to another one," says Kennerly. The bottle manufacturer referred them to the cap manufacturer, who recommended the label maker, and so on.

The baby products are on the shelves of such chains as Wal-Mart, Winn Dixie and Eckerd, with sales expected to reach $500,000 by year-end. --H.C.F.

This article was originally published in the January 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: All A Board.