Barbershop owners are living their dream
Roxann Ramirez and Katy Vojacek opened Fresh to Death Gentleman’s Grooming Club in Baytown in 2017.
“Katy texted me one day and said, ‘What do you think about opening up a barbershop?’ I had already started going down that road, investigating things and getting some help from Lee College’s Small Business Development Center. So I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’
“It took us about a year to put together our business plan. We worked really hard to get it just right. We figured that when we took it to the banks, they would like it. And they did. The numbers added up and everything. But we didn’t have any collateral. We had never run our own business. So everywhere we went turned us down. Nobody would give us a loan. A guy from the Small Business Administration helped us a lot. He helped us realize that we were not going to be able to get a loan. We were going to have to come up with the money ourselves.
“My grandpa had already offered a pretty good amount of money that he could help me out with. Then Katy’s dad helped us with the other half.
“I think they both saw our frustration. When my dad saw I was not stopping, that’s when he said he would help. I can’t tell you how happy that made me.
“Not just anybody hands you that kind of money and says, ‘Go for it.’ For my grandpa to do that for me, it was huge. It’s not easy to look at money from my grandpa. I mean this in the nicest way. But he’s the kind of person who will walk around in a new pair of shoes for an hour before he decides to spend money on them. He has what he has in life because he keeps his money close. He doesn’t let it go to just anyone. So for him to be so generous in helping me like that, to have that confidence in me, it’s something that I will never forget. It’s allowing us to live our dreams.”
— Roxann Ramirez and Katy Vojacek
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