Natural Inspiration - Jabu Stone

I don't have locs and have no intention of ever getting them but I can't deny that well kept locs are beautiful to behold. In my opinion a good deal of the nice clean locs that can be seen here in Zim owe it to pioneers like Jabu Stone. His story is definately inspirational and I found this profile of him on the Dispatch

"When Ginsberg-born natural hair products pioneer Jabu Stone first knocked on bank managers doors 20 years ago and asked them to finance his dreadlock hair business dream, they just laughed at him.
“The banks did not want to finance Rasta hair ... they thought I was crazy,” he chuckled.
But, instead of just giving up, Stone pushed ahead .
From humble beginnings selling tiny quantities of homemade products from the boot of his car in the early 1990s, the man everybody calls Mr Dreads, is now smiling all the way to the bank as his Jabu Stone Natural Hair Products and salons take the world – and even East London – by storm.
Stone recalled how he could not convince any bank manager to finance his idea – especially when he was only shifting six bottles of product a month at R18.99 a pop.
“Nobody wanted it,” the 50- year-old told a group of township teenagers at Scifest Africa.
He said he created a demand in shops by asking his friends to go in and ask for his product by name.
Soon afterwards, a small order would be placed – and the friend would return and buy all the stock in one shot.
The small order then became a branded shelf.
Displaying the same marketing savvy, Stone started his salon empire by hiring one chair in a salon as a way to get them to use his product. “When I first started, woman hairdressers would take one look at the product and walk out.”
But, when things started taking off, the same hairdressers were paying Stone to teach them how to do the dreadlock hairstyles – using his products.
Another stroke of marketing genius was convincing Gerry Rantseli-Elsdon to dreadlock her hair.
“When I first met Gerry, she did not want them,” he recalled.
After she accepted, “everybody wanted them ... and it created a demand on the street”.
The biggest barrier Stone had to overcome was convincing the public that not only dope-smoking Rastas wore their hair in dreadlocks.
“Dreadlocks originated in Africa and go back to the beginning of time,” he passionately explains.
“It is a God-given hairstyle.”
Quoting from Numbers Five, chapter six of the Bible – “which talks about leaving your hair until it locks,” the self-confessed “locktician” says the negative perceptions go all the way back to the days of slavery when, the now popular hairstyle, was described as “dreadful”.
Dreadful quickly became dreadlock – even though people across Africa and beyond wore their hair in that style for centuries.
“Dreadlocks come from Africa – the cradle of mankind.
“They are not un-Godly, they are not dreadful ... they are natural, they are the original hairstyle of the world.”

Although boasting salons across the continent and beyond, Stone really arrived on the world scene when 24- hour world news channel CNN did a minutes-long Inside Africa slot on his rise to the top. In it he was described as a “stylist to the stars”, who had salons throughout Africa and America.
Mention was also made of his friendship with Oprah Winfrey and the fact that he was the only person allowed to touch Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s hair.
Soon he had the people of New York “eating from my hand because I came to them with an African hairstyle from West Africa,” he recalled.
Other big name South African clients include members of the Zulu Royal family, Zinzi Mandela, Sello Maake ka-Ncube, Simphiwe Tshabalala ... the list is endless.

Head of a multinational corporation with tentacles around the world, the married father is proudly South African and gets his products made at a factory that employs 1000 people near Pretoria.
Describing all his products as environmentally friendly, Stone says they can be safely used on all hair types, and not just ethnic hair.
He uses teatree oil, lanolin and other secret organic additives in his products.

Juggling between his family, burgeoning global business empire and his Jabu Stone Foundation charity work, Stone still made time to come to Scifest Africa to inspire young entrepreneurs at the Sasol ChemCity Talkshops to follow their dreams.
Always an innovator, Stone intends to keep ahead of the imitators who are marketing similar products to his, by designing a machine that “crochets” and revitalizes relaxer damaged hair into designer dreads.
Although tightlipped on his soon-to-be-unveiled machine, his passion for natural hair is undeniable."