Some teenagers get an after-faculty career. Paris McKenzie acquired an following-university career.
The precocious 16-yr previous opened her own retail outlet, Paris Magnificence Supplyz, on Church Avenue in Flatbush previous month. She even has an personnel who is six a long time older than her.
“It’s not as awkward as you may well feel,” McKenzie instructed The Post of the managerial romance. “Giselle is 22 and she is so type and welcoming. It’s not like, ‘Oh this 16-yr-old is bossing me around.’ ”
But McKenzie is extremely considerably in demand — and placing on a masterclass in the pandemic hustle. A senior at the Substantial University for Human Services and Health Professions, she grew up performing in her mother’s close by salon, learning the tips of the cosmetology trade, which include hair and nails together with entrepreneurial capabilities.
When a natural beauty store in the community was shutting down, the store’s prior owner approached McKenzie’s mom simply because of her family connections on the block.
“We bought products from that keep nearly each day,” McKenzie claimed. “We’ve been on the avenue for about 16 many years and we know anything about it.” Her 28-year-previous brother, Oshane, a previous Marine now learning mechanical engineering, signed most of the paperwork and developed an LLC for his small sister. She mentioned she built the financial commitment with income she had saved from toiling absent in her mother’s salon.
In the course of August, she and her family members did renovations in the area like pulling up carpet and setting up flooring, exposing brick partitions and incorporating shelving. A sign was hung exterior, incorporating the silhouette of the Eiffel tower into the vibrant pink name. When the doors opened Sept. 4, McKenzie tweeted out her enjoyment.
“I just grew to become the youngest black operator of a beauty provide retail outlet at 16 many years previous! A straightforward retweet or like can assist support,” she wrote alongside a photo of her standing by the storefront.
There was nothing at all “simple” about the response. The post boomeranged close to social media, garnering 139,800 likes and about 57,000 retweets. The store’s Instagram adhering to shot from about 60 to a lot more than 13,000.
“It feels astounding, but at the exact same time I haven’t thoroughly wrapped my head all over it,” McKenzie explained of remaining a store proprietor.
As the praise flowed in, so did some haters.
“There are men and women out there who inform you that you are much too younger to do this or that. I experience like I have proved people erroneous,” McKenzie explained. “There will even now be the comment, ‘She just cannot be the operator. it is unlawful.’ ” (Her brother is technically the guarantor.)
But the on line awareness has introduced in tons of curious customers, together with from as much absent as North Carolina. “One particular person arrived in and explained her nephew in Antigua observed the submit and informed her to test it out,” McKenzie recalled.
She’s also turn into a magnet for mother and father who want their personal small children to soak up her travel — turning her shop into a kiddie “Shark Tank.”
“One of the best issues is dad and mom arrive in and carry their small children to satisfy me and inquire me inquiries. They inquire me how I do it, and I test to give superior advice,” she reported. “One girl was 9 and she preferred to start off a lemonade stand and a lip gloss brand name, so we sat down and talked about likely manufacturer names.”
Some of McKenzie’s lecturers from her middle faculty days at Brooklyn’s North Star Academy have questioned her to take part in job working day. She notes that she’s fortuitous to have a excellent mentor in her beautician mom, Senica Thompson, an immigrant from Jamaica.
“I mostly search up to my mother: her life story and how she constructed herself in this country,” she said. “I normally flip to her for motherly and business enterprise guidance. She is so smart and intelligent.”
Irrespective of her rapidly success in the attractiveness enterprise, the soft-spoken teen — who loves to unwind by seeing reruns of “House” and “Scandal” (“Kerry Washington is my biggest hero soon after my mom,” McKenzie mentioned) — isn’t heading to pursue an MBA.
In its place, she’s eyeing pre-med programs at colleges which includes Georgetown, Hampton, Howard and Johns Hopkins, with strategies to come to be a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.
“I do not want to limit myself to New York colleges,” explained McKenzie. But she doesn’t strategy on abandoning her shop when she goes absent. Instead, she hopes to make it far more self-ample and get her spouse and children up to velocity so they can aid the shop operate effortlessly in her absence. “I normally really feel I can do additional.”
