Sat between a wall and a Coca-Cola machine on the third floor of Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center is a revolutionary vending machine. One that, instead of serving snacks or cold beverages, dispenses Black hair, skin and beauty products to address critical community access needs.
Co-founded by Dorothy Bee and Taj Stokes, the Black Owned Vending International vending machine seeks to address the inaccessibility of beauty products for Black people in communities across Colorado.
“As partners with a history of diverse ventures, we recognized a pressing issue that resonated deeply with our community: the struggle to find quality hair, skin and beauty products tailored to African Americans and people of color, particularly in suburban areas,” the company’s website reads.
“So the idea is to enter into a dialogue with the students. … The idea is to be responsive so that it’s a spot where people can go to get what they need.” -Taj Stokes, B.O.V.I. co-founder
Bee’s founding inspiration for the company came from observing her daughter Naeemah Weathers’ experience of caring for her hair after she moved away to CSU as an undergraduate student.
“It was that type of a community situation,” Bee said. “And so (we) just noticed that my daughter didn’t have access to the hair care products that (she) was accustomed to.”
This situation is similar to Stokes’ own college experience over two decades ago.
“A lot of kids who come (to college) don’t know where to go to get the right products,” Stokes said. “They don’t know what products they should be using, or they’ve just had their hair done by a family member their whole life, or they’re growing their hair out for the first time natural.”
With Weathers’ assistance, the company connected with the Black/African American Cultural Center. Both parties quickly began working to acquire a vending machine on campus.
“It’s about kind of bridging that gap and recognizing that our students are both coming from Colorado but also coming from everywhere across the world,” B/AACC director John Miller IV said. “So what does it mean to help increase access and have it right in the student center?”
Built to suit a variety of student needs, the vending machine offers a wide selection of products for purchase.
“We have bonnets and scarves,” Bee said. “We have durags. We have, of course, the hair products, like shampoo, conditioner, mousse and then we also have a line of eyelashes that are in there.”
As the needs of the present student population change, so do the vending machine’s contents. The company has tailored its offerings based on a feedback survey through B/AACC every semester.
“We kind of figured out we have to survey continuously because what if the people who responded to the survey last year were graduating?” Stokes said. “So we plan on sort of surveying the body once a quarter to kind of find out, what do they need? Because your winter needs are going to be different than spring needs.”
After initially placing the machine in the LSC last May, Bee and Stokes were quickly surprised by the immediate positive feedback and usage of the machine.
“When we placed the unit in May, I didn’t expect to make any money because I’m like, ‘Well, school’s ending,’” Stokes said. “‘It’s not going to make any money until, like, August or September,’ and we had probably two or three people going by that unit, buying something every day.”
Feedback was instantaneous, with many students noting the positive impact the machine’s offerings had on the campus community. The machine also stood out to incoming students and their parents.
“We had some students come to visit campus with their parents, and one of the pieces of feedback that we got from the parents was it made them feel safer about their kids coming and going this far from home because they’re going to have what they need on campus,” Stokes said.
The company’s business model also works to keep prices similar to big box retailers while accounting for the demographic of its student customer’s budgets.
“We’re not trying to take college kids’ money,” Stokes said. “We know that you guys have a limited budget, so … we want to make sure that the prices are fair and competitive with Walmart or Amazon or where they might be able to go to get it someplace else.”
B.O.V.I. also seeks to give back to the communities it operates in by reinvesting “10% of profits from each unit into a local charity within the respective zip code.” At the CSU location, a portion of the proceeds go directly back to B/AACC.
Looking to the future, the company is hoping to delve into content creation to better assist customers with learning how to use the products available for purchase.
“We’re working to get together to do a series of, like, videos where we’re like, ‘Hey, let us not just show you what products you should be using on your hair, but let us actually give you some tutorials,’” Stokes said. “Like, ‘Here’s how you can do a two strand twist in under 15 minutes’ — little things like that.”
While B.O.V.I.’s founders and their partners at B/AACC will continue to innovate as new waves of students join CSU, the original mission of the vending machines holds true.
“So the idea is to enter into a dialogue with the students,” Stokes said. “The idea is to be responsive so that it’s a spot where people can go to get what they need.”
Reach Katie Fisher at life@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.
