Breaking Barriers

Breaking A Barrier: Becoming a Self-Made Millionaire

How did she do it?

Knowing your market

She was a woman ahead of her time. Walker knew her market well. Her choice of cities and how she spoke to her clients took advantage of the fact that she was dealing with African-American women who were largely from rural farming communities.

"Do you realize that it is necessary to cultivate the scalp to grow hair as it is to cultivate the soil to grow a garden?" (Bundles 98).

Strategy

When she went into African-American communities she would: 

  • contact Baptist or AME Churches or both
  • find the best rooming house
  • introduce herself to local African-American fraternal organizations
  • arrange demonstrations at a church or a lodge
  • hold classes to train agents (An agent job was attracted to women as a way to supplement the family income.)
  • take orders
  • move on to next place


Indiana Headquarters

Photos courtesy :Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundles.

What was the payoff?

  • 1907- $3,652 (Tripled her 1906 earnings)

  • 1908- $6,672

  • 1909- $8,782 = equivalent today to $150,000

  • 1910- $10,989= equivalent today to $200,000 ​​​​​​​

(Bundles 347)

Historical Context

  • Most working black women- $8 to $20 per month

  • White male factory- $40 to $60 per month

  • Walker made $300 a month

Expanding her business

  • She put advertisements in newspapers

  • She traveled around the country to show her products to people

  • She also hired some of her customers to sell her hair products

  • That gave more time to invent new products and ways to sell them

  • 1907- built Headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania because it had 16 rail lines for her mail order business

  • 1908- Founded a beauty parlor and college to teach agents how to use and sell Walker's products

  • 1910- She had 950 sales agents and thousands of clients. She built a new headquarters in Indianapolis, began advertising, and offering incentives such as cash rewards

  • 1910- She starts to use social and business opportunities to engage potential investors