How Kiki Harmon built a thriving barber shop — and a community

It’s 5 p.m. on Sept. 24, and people are filing into Kiki the Barber, a barber shop off South Locust Street in Oxford. No one is there to get a haircut today, though. They’re all gathering to celebrate Juiquetta Harmon — Kiki — the shop’s owner and namesake.

Some of the guests come bearing plants, others with food. It’s Harmon’s birthday, and everyone knows how much she likes plants. But this year, Harmon’s birthday is the secondary cause for celebration. What the three dozen or so people are really gathered for is a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

This year, Harmon won a $5,000 Storefronts to the Forefront grant for her business. The grant program is a partnership between the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, Duke Energy and Huntington Bank to recognize local businesses throughout Greater Cincinnati and help provide funding for capital improvements. Harmon’s money has gone toward a new sign for her store and other improvements.

The grant is just a small testament to Harmon’s work in Oxford over the past decade, though. The real reward is the community she’s built through her service.

Hair care as wellness

Harmon moved to Oxford in 2016 to help another hairdresser before going into business by herself in 2017, and Kiki the Barber was born. Since then, she said her business has grown astronomically.

Harmon’s journey with hair care started decades before she opened her own business. In 1998, her father had a stroke. Harmon’s mother had died in 1996, the same year Harmon graduated high school. The doctors told her that her father would never be able to walk or talk again and probably wouldn’t recognize her, let alone be able to cut his hair or shave. So, Harmon cut his hair for him.

“I had no idea that walking alongside my father after a stroke — making sure he looked the same, making sure he smelled good like he always did before this happened to him — I didn’t know that that was the fuel behind me pushing wellness,” Harmon said.

As she cared for her father, Harmon said they grew closer in their relationship with one another. That helped her see how hair care could be a part of wellness.

Now, Harmon is intentional with every customer. She makes sure to have hot towels ready, and she doesn’t take the trust that people place in her for granted. To Harmon, it’s an important responsibility for people to believe in her to help them build confidence in the way they look.

“I’m also very careful [with] every person that I meet and encounter, that I’m not here to heal them,” Harmon said. “I’m not God, you know, but what God has given me is tools. He’s given me wisdom. He has given me grace, so much love … it would be unnatural for me not to pour out, because I’m like a waterfall.”

Harmon has spent thousands of hours cutting every type of hair, and she said she wants people of every hair type to feel confident in her service. For her, that means time spent studying different hair types and practicing over the past two decades to make sure she has experience to draw from.

“When people are born into this world, we’re all born different,” Harmon said. “… It’s just as important to me, in any age and in any race, that you feel something maybe that you have never experienced before — that you’re getting more than a haircut.”

Building a community

Brett Smith, a professor in the Farmer School of Business, has been trusting Harmon with his hair for years. Haircuts are functional for Smith, but he said he can’t imagine going anywhere else because of the personal experience Harmon brings to her business.

“The haircut is amazing, but Kiki is even more amazing,” Smith said. “We love her to death … The way she has customized and catered this to just be an experience for people to come in and hang out and communicate, share their lives, it’s amazing.”

A big table with seating takes up the center of Harmon’s salon. Further back, she has dozens of books on display in another seating area, encouraging people to spend time in the building. Smith said he’s watched the space evolve in the past few years into something that goes beyond just a barber shop.

Harmon’s efforts reach past walls of her barber shop. Each year when the Talawanda School District’s picture day comes around, she goes into the schools to give free haircuts to students in need. When the Kiwanis Club of Oxford holds its annual Back to School Bash, Harmon is always there, ready to give kids free haircuts so they can start the new school year off fresh. Harmon said Gini Combs, a stylist who works in her barber shop, also volunteers her time at these events.

Now that she’s received the storefront grant, Harmon is giving back financially, too. She said she plans to donate $1,000 to the Oxford Brave Field Hockey team to help with expenses. When Harmon told the regional president of Huntington Bank about her plans at a ceremony where she received the grant, he agreed to match her donation.

Kelli Riggs, president of the Oxford Chamber of Commerce, said Harmon’s background and effort she’s put into giving back to Oxford may have been a factor in her selection for the Storefront grant. 

“Not only is this person running a small, successful business, but … she’s done a lot of good for the community,” Riggs said.

For Harmon, the love and welcome she’s received from people in Oxford and the surrounding areas has been overwhelming. Her role now, she says, is to give it back to everyone she meets.

“Inclusion is not building walls. Inclusion is not making excuses,” Harmon said. “It’s about making sure that we have an open door and open arms when it’s the hardest … it means that I’m not gonna change my mind about bringing love to the world and bringing love to every person just because somebody else is in the room.”