From Celebrity Hairstylist to Fragrance Founder, Why Kahh Spence’s Next Act Smells Like a Million Dollars

As a hairstylist, Kahh Spence spent more than a decade creating memorable looks for stars including Cardi B, Kehlani, Kelly Rowland, Normani and Victoria Monét. But after years of shaping how others showed up in the world, the Brooklyn native was ready to introduce himself as a businessman.

In August 2025, he launched Samir Grey, a luxury fragrance and personal-care brand inspired by memory and intentional living. The brand’s name combines Spence’s middle name with his favorite color, while its purpose honors his late mother, Sharisee, who died from colon cancer. The debut fragrance, ONE, was inspired by a recurring dream of walking along a Hawaiian beach with her. Since its launch, Samir Grey has surpassed $500,000 in sales and is projected to reach $1 million by the end of 2026.

Spence spoke with The Root about his decision to bet on himself and what aspiring Black entrepreneurs should understand before turning their ideas into a sustainable business.

Although the most obvious path to entrepreneurship would have been to launch a haircare line, Spence began studying the market to understand where his perspective could offer something different.

“I think it’s about doing research and figuring out what the white spaces in the market are,” Spence told The Root. “What are the stories that you can tell? I feel like entrepreneurship is a lot around storytelling.”

With a background in marketing, he recognized that haircare was already a crowded space, while fragrance still had room for fresher storytelling. Before launching, his team conducted a full landscape analysis to understand what was missing, how his brand could distinguish itself and whether there was a viable audience waiting for it.

The response, he said, confirmed his initial instincts.

“I’m seeing that come to life in the brand that I’m building and the feedback that we receive from the sales numbers, the metrics and the data,” he said.

Spence and his team self-funded Samir Grey’s first production run, a reality he is careful not to present as universally accessible.

“We just went into our bank accounts, and we funded it that way. There’s a privilege in that,” he said. “I am so grateful to God for being able to have the finances and the resources to be able to do such a thing.”

But keeping Samir Grey profitable required Spence to be equally clear about what the company did not need. He leaned on the relationships he developed throughout his career, recognizing that his own name, experience and network were assets that could help the business operate at a higher level without overspending.

“Every partner that I work with, from public, consumer-facing to back-end, takes a chance on this company, which I’m so grateful for,” he said.

While Spence and his team poured themselves into creating a successful product, the brand got a big boost when Tina Knowles unexpectedly featured the fragrance in a social media post with Kelly Rowland. Spence was in bed on a Saturday morning when he opened Instagram and saw the two discussing his product. Almost immediately, Samir Grey’s social channels caught fire and orders began arriving at a rate he had never experienced – selling two weeks of inventory in two hours as website traffic increased.

“I opened our Shopify, and I’m like, ‘Whoa, there’s an order coming in probably every second,’” he recalled.

Fortunately, Spence had built the business with a possible breakout moment in mind. Logistics, email marketing, social media and the online checkout experience were already in place, allowing the company to handle the sudden attention without sacrificing its customer experience.

Going viral also exposed an issue that rarely makes it into the glamorous stories about entrepreneurship as his product began selling faster than the company could replenish it.

“Some people glamorize what it’s like to be sold out,” Spence said. “That is probably one of the most stressful times because you’re essentially playing a waiting game.”

For emerging Black entrepreneurs hoping to build something sustainable, Spence pushes back against the popular belief that founders can enter any industry armed with business instincts alone. Entrepreneurs can learn along the way, he said, but they still need a meaningful understanding of the market they hope to enter.

Just as importantly, they must learn to separate useful feedback from noise.

“I get a note every day from someone saying, ‘You should do this, you should do this,’” Spence said. “Folks are going to have opinions all day, but their wallets usually don’t match those opinions.”