COMPANY NEWS

1. October 15, 2000
2. Business Writer
3. NEWARK feachered in the Oakland Tribune / & a STUDENT REVIEW
4. Fall Newsletter of 2009
5. Mother's Day Newsletter of 2009
6. By Andrew F. Hamm
   EVERYTHING SEEMED to be going right for Norma Johnson.
   The Indianapolis native had been wined and dined by the Sequoia Union High School District in an attempt to get her to move to San Mateo County. The district paid some of the highest salaries in the nation, and the student body regularly ranked in the top percentile in the state in most major categories.
   An anonymous donor even paid for the child care for her child from her first marriage. And when she got married for a second time, the local PTA helped plan the wedding and her principal gave her away.
   Six years later it all changed. Shortly after Proposition 13 was passed by California voters in 1978, the district fired all its teachers -- hiring most of them back at half the salary they had before.
   "It was bad. It was devastating. It was so bad they hired counselors to talk with the teachers to help them get through it," Johnson said.
   For Norma, 35 at the time, it was a wake-up call.
   "I told myself I wasn't going to fall apart. I said 'I'm going to get a business.'"
   Johnson was teaching business and entrepreneur classes for students living in the well-off Menlo Park and Atherton area.
   Out of that came Norma J's Signature Collection, a wholesale/retail cosmetics business that is based in Oakland and Atlanta.
   "I was teaching young rich kids to get richer and said, 'I'm going to apply these skills for myself.'"
   Johnson got involved with cosmetics -- doing home shows with other companies' products for friends and neighbors before branching out to clubs and organizations.
   Along the way, Johnson realized none of them was taking advantage of the large African-American market.
   "Revlon, Maybelline ... and others would have a little bit for minorities over here to one side, but not a whole (beauty, bath and body) product line," Johnson said.
   In 1981 she took over the back room of a real estate agency she helped out at from time to time to open her first shop.
   She called it "Free Spirit Collection Fashion Boutique" and sold several lines of cosmetics for a mostly African-American clientele. She moved the business to her own shop in East Palo Alto two years later.
   Still unsatisfied with the range of products offered to minorities, including Latinos and Asians, Johnson began huddling with several cosmetic manufacturers and their chemists she met at conventions and shows and began to develop her own line of cosmetics.
   She opened Free Spirit Collection in 1989 at the San Francisco Gift Center, an incubator for small businesses trying to get into the wholesale business.
   While Johnson's shop did some retail business at the downtown location, most of it was wholesaling to sales people doing home shows as well as several small businesses throughout the area.
   Johnson had enough sales by 1992 to re-enter the retail market full time with her own shop in Jack London Square called Norma J's Signature Collection.
   Those were good times, Johnson said. Everything seemed right with the world. She developed a strong and loyal customer base, and she gradually expanded her own collection so that she could sell to all races.
   "It was really nice. Palo Alto was mostly dark-skinned, while San Francisco was mostly white. But Oakland -- especially Jack London Square -- I got a mix of people," Johnson said.
   She turned a profit by her third year and was expanding once again into home shows when she hit another setback. Actually, two.
   In 1994, while putting away materials at her school, she fell and severely hurt her wrists, neck and shoulders when she stuck out her hands to break her fall. She soon developed carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrists.
   A worker-injury lawsuit with the school district dragged on for five years and two operations before she settled with the Redwood City School District. She wound up having surgery on both wrists, and a bad back put her on the shelf for another year.
   Then, the Oakland Port Authority's long-planned hotel project for Jack London Square forced Johnson to close shop in 1998.
   The move prompted Johnson to go back into the wholesale side of the business full time, using a business incubator in Atlanta as a launching pad.
   "I'm really getting a lot of support in Atlanta. They are mostly interested in dot-coms here," Johnson said.
   She is looking to export her products overseas, including South Africa and Europe. She's even added a men's line.
   She claims 35 percent of her customers at her Jack London Square shop were men.
   "They'd peek in after a show or dinner, and I'd give them a free facial," Johnson said. Men are a potentially huge income source in the cosmetics business, Johnson said.
   "Men buy more per purchase than women," Johnson said. "Women will come in and buy this and that, but a man will come in and buy a whole line of products."
   In Atlanta, the male half of the human race has been a bit of a tougher sell than in more liberated California. But the customer base is there, She insists.
   "They don't talk about it, but they use it," Johnson said.
   Once again divorced, Johnson recently sold her Newark home she bought in 1976 -- although she will continue to rent a room at the house -- and has bought a beautiful Victorian home in Atlanta. Her daughter is using the home and helping with the business while Johnson is teaching in Redwood City.
   The business is expanding and taking more and more of Johnson's time. She has already flown cross-country four times this year setting up displays and talking with prospective clients.
   Many of the larger cosmetic companies don't spend a lot of advertising dollars in the South, which Johnson claims makes it ripe for picking.
   All of this, of course, means her teaching career that started at a vocational technical college in Indianapolis in 1969 may be nearing an end.
   She's putting off the decision for now, but a day of reckoning is at hand.
   "It's hard to give it up," she said, her voice growing low. "The kids are so wonderful, and it has always been real rewarding."
   Over the last three year, Johnson has put almost all her spare time into getting her business off the ground. It is now time to see it take off, she said.
   "My goal is to be a second Madam C. J. Walker," said Johnson, referring to one of the first female African-American millionaires (1867-1919), who also happened to be an Indianapolis native who made her money in hair care and other beauty products for minorities.
   Her hard work since her Jack London Square shop closed down is beginning to pay off, Johnson said.
   "I can see it, feel it, almost touch it," she said. "It's such a great feeling."

   ABOUT THE WRITER
   Summary: By Andrew F. Hamm Business Writer NEWARK EVERYTHING SEEMED to be going right for Norma Johnson. The Indianapolis native had been wined and dined by the Sequoia Union High School District in an attempt to get her to move to San Mateo Co ...

NORMA J's HEART BEAT

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