The beauty entrepreneur who made the Jheri curl a sensation

Summary

The hairstyle originally involved an expensive trip to a salon. Then Comer Cottrell introduced the Curly Kit during the 1980s recession. It was the early 1980s and America was in the depths of a major economic recession. But for brothers James and Sherman Willis — the co-owners of Willis Beauty Supply, a Black-cosmetics distribution company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio — business was booming. Much of their success came down to the sale of a single product: the Pro-Line Curly Kit, also known as the at-home Jheri curl. The brainchild of Los Angeles beauty entrepreneur Comer Cottrell and his brother Jim, the Curly Kit’s do-it-yourself box formula brought shiny, wet-look curls to the masses. Suddenly, a style that had cost upwards of $300 at the salon was achievable in customers’ own homes for $8. It wasn’t long before the Jheri curl was everywhere, purchased from the Cottrells by distributors like Willis Beauty Supply and sold to retailers across the country. It graced heads from church picnics to bank-teller queues, crowning pop stars like Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie and pro-athletes like Walter Payton and A.C. Green. “The Curly Kit put everybody on the market,” Sherman Willis, now 80, told me from his home in Columbus. Willis would likely spot some similarities in today’s beauty-market trends. The U.S. isn’t officially in a recession — though J.P. Morgan Research estimated a 40% chance of one starting before the end of this year — but rising costs and general economic uncertainty are already shifting consumer behavior. In what has become a reliable recession indicator, salon workers report feeling the squeeze as customers increasingly opt for lower-maintenance coifs that need minimal professional upkeep. Grown-out “recession blonde” tresses have even been declared by some trend-spotters as the style of this summer. It’s a pattern that calls to mind the “lipstick index,” the time-worn maxim that lipstick sales spike when the economy falters. But the idea app...