“I got my start by giving myself a start.”
If you walk into a Sephora cosmetics store, you’ll find a line of Madam C.J. Walker hair products in pastel squeeze bottles. They may seem like any other line of coconut and shea oils, but the story behind their namesake is a particularly remarkable one.
During the 1890s, Sarah developed a scalp disorder that caused her to lose much of her hair, and she began to experiment with both home remedies and store-bought hair care treatments in an attempt to improve her condition.
In 1907 Walker and her husband traveled around the South and Southeast promoting her products and giving lecture demonstrations of her “Walker Method” — involving her own formula for pomade, brushing and the use of heated combs.
As profits continued to grow, in 1908 Walker opened a factory and a beauty school in Pittsburgh, and by 1910, when Walker transferred her business operations to Indianapolis, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company had become wildly successful, with profits that were the modern-day equivalent of several million dollars.
Walker was also recognized by the Guinness World Records as being the first woman to be a self-made millionaire, meaning she neither inherited the money nor married into it.
