Angella Kyabaggu had a big vision for K-Laba Hair and Beauty Supplies the moment she opened her first store in London in 1997. “I was just a young girl in school, but in the back of my mind, I was always thinking of creating something that could help address this need in the community,” says Kyabaggu.

She’d struggled to find Black hair care products since immigrating to Canada from Grenada in the 1980s. K-Laba Hair and Beauty Supplies aimed to solve that. She started with London, opening a shop on Dundas Street, then, within five years, Kyabaggu opened a location in nearby Woodstock, then another in London and a fourth in Burlington.

Photo by: David Simon, Sandbox Photovideo (Angella Kyabaggu)

By day, Kyabaggu worked as a registered nurse, quietly toiling away on the back end of the shop in the background as she built her career over the next two and a half decades. She brought in more wigs, extensions, and hair care products. Her customer base expanded. People came in for wedding day looks and special occasions. People arrived from theatres looking for wigs. There were chemotherapy patients, people with alopecia, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and seniors with thinning hair.

But all those years of expansion and growth came to a standstill with the pandemic.

“Our sales dropped 96 percent and we still had to pay our staff,” says Kyabaggu, remembering the early days of the pandemic. “Nobody was coming out… we didn’t know how to sell (and) we weren’t online – I didn't know what to do, I lost a lot of sleep trying to figure it out.”

Kyabaggu realized the best way to manage this strange new reality would be to invest in an online presence. She shut down the Burlington location to re-route resources towards e-commerce. “We were running an old-style cash register… we had to work so hard to put things online.”

Photo by: David Simon, Sandbox Photovideo

Around the time she was making her digital transformation, she connected with the My Main Street program, which aims to revitalize business communities through hands-on support. The program is funded with a $23.25-million Government of Canada investment through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) and delivered by the Economic Developers Council of Ontario (EDCO). Kyabaggu used part of the $10,000 in funding to invest in more inventory and bring it online. The extra inventory became critical as K-Laba Hair and Beauty Supplies started retailing through Walmart and Amazon online. “The inventory goes so fast when you’re selling online.”

She also used some of the funding to ramp up surveillance and upgrade security at her shop given the high volume of inventory she was bringing in.

Now, clients can order from all over the world. And they do. Kyabaggu says she gets purchases from places as far afield as Australia and has even seen some interest from Nunavut.

She says they use a point-of-sale system to consolidate online with the main street locations. It’s linked with software telling Kyabaggu how much they pay for products, what they’re selling them at, what’s moving, and what isn't. She can track trends and invest in the next big thing. “It tells us everything… it’s a great system,” she says. “I have a staff member monitoring it all the time to see what's going on there.”

Photo by: David Simon, Sandbox Photovideo

Through My Main Street’s in-depth market research on the demographics, interests and social media use in her target markets, she learned her clients are predominantly on Facebook and Instagram. “We're sending out posts every week and people are coming in like crazy.”

In February 2023, Kyabaggu finally retired from nursing to focus on her hybrid e-commerce/brick-and-mortar business full-time. In a sense, it’s full-circle from when she started it, still staying ahead of needs, still focused on community. “The business needs me now,” she says. “I have to be on top of everything every single month because the changes are happening too fast – the new styles are coming out and if you don't get in the game with them, then the customers go looking elsewhere.”

About My Main Street

My Main Street is a $23.25-million Government of Canada investment through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario to support the recovery and revitalization of main streets and local businesses in southern Ontario. The Canadian Urban Institute and the Economic Developers Council of Ontario have partnered to deliver My Main Street through two program streams. Learn more at www.mymainstreet.ca.

About FedDev Ontario

For 13 years, the Government of Canada, through FedDev Ontario, has worked to advance and diversify the southern Ontario economy through funding opportunities and business services that support innovation, growth and job creation in Canada’s most populous region. The Agency has delivered impressive results, which can be seen in southern Ontario businesses that are creating innovative technologies, improving productivity, growing revenues, creating jobs, and in the economic advancement of communities across the region. Learn more about the impacts the Agency is having in southern Ontario by exploring our pivotal projects, our Southern Ontario Spotlight, and FedDev Ontario’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.