Pressed Roots is watering new soil in Washington, D.C.
The silk blowout bar serving the textured hair community will open its fifth salon — and its first outside Texas — during what founder Piersten Gaines described as a “good” year for the business. The expansion aligns with Gaines’ ongoing goal of making “quality hair care” accessible to everyone.
“People have been requesting us in different cities across the country since our inception … We really wanted to really perfect our model and make sure that we had this operation down before we moved outside of Texas,” she told AFROTECH™. “We knew we wanted to be in a market that really encompassed what our brand represents.”
While Gaines acknowledges that the data pointed to several major cities as potential new locations for Pressed Roots, DC stood out because of the available spaces identified by her real estate group, its population density, target market, and growth potential. She hopes to open a cluster of salons in the area, similar to the approach they took in Dallas and plan to pursue in Houston.
“We’re planning to open up a few locations in the next few years there. DC felt like a really great entry point to the East Coast,” she said.
The new salon opens to customers in early December, with the same experience offered at its other locations. Gaines credits the salon’s technology with helping maintain that consistency. Stylists have benefited from training technology to ensure they can perform the Pressed Roots method. It also provides stylists with operational KPIs, such as average styling time, feedback score, and add-on retail sales.
The DC location will have a dedicated training station in the back of the salon.
“These are KPIs that are automatically provided to them on a weekly basis based off our proprietary technology that other salons don’t have. This is why we’re able to have that promise that we have for our customers, that gets our customers in and out in under 120 minutes,” Gaines explained. “On average, they’re in and out in about 100 minutes, which for this service is really unheard of to be able to do this at this scale that consistently.”
Pressed Roots employs more than 100 team members, and that number will rise to an estimated 150 with the DC expansion, according to information shared with AFROTECH™. It has also completed nearly 15,000 services and secured additional funding, bringing its total to $6 million, according to a press release.
“I hope that this not only encourages our community that we can build for us, but also that for people outside of our community to see that businesses that target our community can be very profitable, be very successful, and that founders from this community are worth backing,” she expressed to AFROTECH™.
There is still more to come from Pressed Roots. Gaines confirmed the company signed its first franchisee, and that salon is set to open in 2027. She is working to qualify more candidates.
“I always have seen this as a franchise business. That’s always been a goal of mine. And so having, creating pathways for more people to create wealth for themselves through this business … I want this to be a path to ownership for stylists, but also for other people who are passionate about business, entrepreneurship, to have a wash, rinse, repeat method to do so,” she said.