When people think of businesses open around the clock, they usually picture casinos, fast food drive-thrus or late-night pharmacies.
Now add a hair salon to the list.
At Nadine’s Hair Braiding, a 10,000-square-foot salon in suburban Bowie, Maryland, customers can walk in at 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. and find a stylist ready. The salon holds 120 styling seats, under bright lights reflecting off polished black porcelain floors.
“The clients were telling me, ‘Please don’t close before 8 p.m., please open at 2 a.m., please open at 3 a.m.,’” said founder and CEO Nadine Djuiko.
For Lade Smith, a first-time customer, that accessibility is a major draw.
“If I need to get in a chair immediately, I can get in a chair immediately,” she said.
For many Black women, a hair appointment can mean spending an entire day at the salon. Double-bookings. Long waits.
At Nadine’s, that dynamic is flipped. Instead, stylists do the waiting.
“Sometimes we wait two or three hours for another client,” said Lovelyn Assaba, who is among the 400 braiders working at the shop.
Speed is another part of the salon’s appeal. Two stylists often work on one client, cutting service time in half. Clients who book between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. pay an additional $40, to offset the cost of keeping the business open overnight.
Life of a braider
Most of the braiders working at Nadine’s are independent contractors who choose their own hours. Some are stay-at-home moms, recent immigrants, or even teachers looking for additional income. For Lucyovia Akombi, a stylist with a decade of braiding experience, the flexible schedule is the primary draw. She said braiders can set their own hours and work around other responsibilities.
“Nobody is forcing you,” Akombi said. “Some people come during the night. I come during the day. When I feel tired, I’m free to go home. It’s very flexible.”
A multimillion-dollar business
At peak capacity, the salon serves up to 600 clients a day. Styles typically start at $220, meaning a busy day can bring in more than $130,000 in revenue.
Last summer, the business moved into its current location, a former warehouse, allowing Nadine’s Hair Braiding to accommodate even more stylists and customers. The original storefronts — once a cluster of neighboring units in a strip mall — are still open and now serve largely as a training space where new braiders practice their techniques.
For Djuiko, the road to success began with a devastating financial loss.
She and her husband once invested more than $200,000 into a venture that turned out to be a scam.
“I did not want to get depressed,” she said. “I felt like it was my fault. That obsession with getting my money back drove me to open this business 24 hours.”
Even after launching the salon, embracing the profession took time.
“In my country, doing hair was a very diminished job,” said the Cameroonian native. “People would look at you like you were not smart enough to go to school.”
For years, Djuiko kept her work a secret.
“I told my mom, ‘Don’t tell anybody I’m doing hair here,’” the entrepreneur shared. “When my friends called, I told them I was in medical school. I was lying.”
Health Concerns
More Black women have moved away from chemical relaxers — which can damage hair over time — and toward natural styles.
New concerns are emerging.
A recent investigation by Consumer Reports found toxins such as lead and arsenic in popular hair braiding products. Scientists say repeated exposure is linked to reproductive health issues and certain cancers. Of all the brands tested, only one was toxin-free: Dosso Beauty Hypoallergenic Kanekalon Fiber Braiding Hair showed no heavy metals.
Recently, U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio introduced the Healthy Hair Act, which would ban formaldehyde from hair straightening and smoothing products.
The proposal would not address risks tied to braiding hair. But it signals growing attention in Washington to chemicals used in Black hair care products. Some people rinse synthetic braiding hair in apple cider vinegar before use to try to strip away residues, but there’s limited evidence on whether that’s actually effective.
Researchers and entrepreneurs are exploring plant-based alternatives, including fibers made from banana skins, as a safer options for braiding hair.
Djuiko said she is interested in these options but has not yet found suppliers who can provide enough product to meet her salon’s demand.
“The quantity in the market is not large enough for us to jump into it right now,” she said. “But if I have the opportunity to have something safer, that’s what I’m going to choose, because that’s what everybody wants.”
Looking ahead
A client’s social media post about the salon went viral, bringing in a surge of out-of-state customers. As the business continues to grow, Djuiko hopes to expand the concept nationwide. But she says doing so will require a larger pipeline of trained braiders.
She wants governments to treat braiding as a formal trade, something that could be taught in high school programs or specialized programs.
“We will need the government to open braiding schools and make it official,” she said. “People should be able to go through courses and earn certificates to become stylists.”
Teaching those skills early, she said, could give young people a practical way to earn money and support themselves.
“If you have a child who knows how to do hair or nails or eyelashes, she can easily make money,” Djuiko said. “That’s a skill you can carry anywhere.”
For the entrepreneur who once hid her profession, the transformation still feels surreal. What began as a way to recover financial losses has grown into a booming business, and a crown she now wears proudly.
