FAITH, HOPE TRUST HOW ADOLE LAW’S BUSINESS NEEDS ENDED UP SERVING THE COMMUNITY’S NEEDS

Before we started interviewing Adole Law about how she established Eli Braids & Beauty Supply, she began with a prayer. It was a fitting way for her to open up about her faithrich personal narrative.

Adole started braiding from her apartment during a dark time in her life. She was working hard to get herself out of a stated “mess” she was in. As her braiding skills became popular, the manager threatened to cancel her lease if she kept working out of her apartment. “Okay,” she asserts, “I’m like, let’s just go find a store.”

She opened her storefront on San Mateo NE south of I-40, taking “everything from my house to the shop,” and figuring out how to “do a beauty supply [store] starting from scratch. I didn’t know what I was doing. [But] little by little, [the business] was growing.”

Ths shop was her personal experiment, bred out of practicality, and it eventually hit a stride. However, “It wasn’t easy at all. A lot of people laughed at me when I started. But I was trusting God,” and she kept pushing herself, saying, “I know I’ll be okay. Five years later, I was like, Oh, I can make it. I will be okay.”

Adole started braiding when she was very little, trying to do her Barbie’s hair, then practicing on friends. She left Togo in West Africa in 2011, after marrying her now ex-husband. They first moved to Minnesota, then Albuquerque in 2013 because he was in the Army. After their split, she started her business out of necessity, and appreciated every challenge. “[Braiding] helped me get on my feet and, after that, it just became a passion for me.” Despite missing Togolese food, she says she loves every single thing about Albuquerque, “because I got my blessing from here.”

Adole opened her shop less preoccupied than others might be about market needs for Black hair products. Back then, she was more concerned about a need within herself. Plus, “I interact with everybody,” she says. Adole noted that when she arrived, “I don’t know anybody, I don’t know who to talk to, so I just start. And everybody who come to me, I love them. I interact with them. It doesn’t matter. You are Black, you are white,” everyone she encounters she serves, “That’s it.” It’s that same etiquette which found her putting this very paper in every customer’s bag when they leave the store; that same sense of community.

When talking with Adole, she exudes a clear sense of agency, faith, and freedom. “I love where I am and I’m hoping for better, so I can serve better my community. Life is not easy, but when you trust God, when you don’t give up, when you don’t hold on to your past, no matter the mistakes, no matter the mess—[then] you get up and ask help from God. You can make it.”