Helping Black Women Entrepreneurs Scale
11.02.2021
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LISC StoriesEconomic Development
As a little girl, Erica Fulcher, was very outgoing, funny and loved to entertain and help others. Instead of playing with dolls, she loved to play with cosmetics. She remembers carrying around caboodles filled with lotions, fingernail polish, lipsticks, and perfume samples. One of her fondest childhood memories is going to the nail salon with her mother, begging the nail technicians to give her acrylic nails so that she could tape them on.
That love of beauty and aesthetics continued throughout her teen years when she got her first facial to manage oily skin and tighten pores.
“I vividly remember my skin glowing and how much more confident it made me feel. It was then I was hooked on skin care treatments.”
Fast forward to today, Erica followed her passion and became a licensed esthetician. Her business, Roux Skin Care Studio is named after her late Grandmother Olga Roux Pichon, who lived to be 98 years young. She encouraged Erica through some of the most memorable and challenging times of her life.
From left to right: Emma Kloppenburg, LISC LA Program Officer; Candace V. Harris, Founder/CEO of CVM Worldwide; Erica Fulcher, owner of Roux Skin Care Studio; Miranda Rodriguez, LISC LA Deputy Director; Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, LISC LA Executive Director; and Celina Pacana, LISC LA Assistant Program Officer
“My Grandmother was a true Queen and strong individual. She loved God, her family and was the sweetest, most humble, kindest, always positive person I’ve met in my life. She was a lover of nature from flowers, plants, butterflies, vegetables, and water, which is why she had the most beautiful skin and lived a very blessed life.” ~ Erica Fulcher
Erica is one out of 30 entrepreneurs in our Black Business Excellence Technical Assistance (BBET) Initiative, a new LISC LA accelerator program that provides wrap- around business services to Black-owned businesses in the personal care industry – health, wellness, and beauty – that is taking these businesses to the next level with the support of Pacific Premier Bank, the James Irvine Foundation, and U.S. Bank.
Harvard Business Review released a report sharing that in the U.S., “17% of Black women are in the process of starting or running new businesses, compared to just 10% of white women, and 15% of white men.” However, only 3% of Black female entrepreneurs run mature businesses. The main reason for this is due to lack of access to capital.
The BBET program is looking to change that statistic with technical assistance support in the form of live training lead by industry experts in the field on strategic business planning, marketing, accounting, raising capital, optimizing supply chain and disaster resilience. The businesses also get one-on-one business advising where entrepreneurs are paired with a business advisor with expertise in their industry. Each entrepreneur has the opportunity to meet weekly with their advisor.
"I'm excited and honored to open doors for these entrepreneurs to succeed and thrive in their businesses. This is a pivotal time in our economy and a purposeful time in our communities to equip business owners with the knowledge and resources to execute with excellence. The BBET program represents transformational change for business owners in this industry just like Erica who can now create generational wealth from her grandmother's seed of inspiration" ~Candace V. Harris, Founder/CEO of CVM Worldwide
“When people walk into Roux Skin Care Studio, I want them to not only experience a transformational facial and feel good about the time they have carved out for self-care, but also I want people to know, you can accomplish anything in life when you put your mind to it.” ~ Erica Fulcher
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