Above photo: Kiyomi Rollins, left, founded The Ke’nekt Cooperative as a place for locals to find mutual aid and entrepreneurship support. Kiyomi Rollins.
When her own small business was threatened with eviction, Kiyomi Rollins found a way to lift up other Black entrepreneurs in her neighborhood.
Kiyomi Rollins can smell the coffee even before she walks through the door at The Ke’nekt Cooperative in Atlanta’s Westview neighborhood. Sunshine fills the space with energy; every seat is full. She smiles at the neighborhood aunties sitting next to the entrepreneurs from Atlanta University Center and the community resident teaching a small group about social media content creation for neighborhood startups. She watches as a middle-schooler from down the street fundraises for his school trip and each person around the table helps out however they can.
At The Ke’nekt Cooperative, locals can find mutual aid and entrepreneurship support. Born out of Rollins’s eviction by her landlord from her hair products shop, amid growing concerns about neighborhood gentrification, Ke’nekt is now a model attracting attention around the world.
As the founder of both The Ke’nekt Cooperative and The Good Hair Shop, Rollins is an example of how small-scale manufacturers can radically transform small, underutilized spaces into hubs of community support, innovation and stability, especially for communities pushed aside in the face of rapid development.
Opened in 2019, The Ke’nekt Cooperative is the center of a growing mutual aid community of African American entrepreneurs and neighbors in Westview. In addition to classes and workshops, the center — filled with long wooden tables and comfortable big chairs on a bright orange floor – hosts annual festivals like Ujamaafest, Juneteenth Jubilee Block Party and Small Business Saturday to showcase local product businesses and to give their owners access to growing markets in the Atlanta area.
In 2024, Ke’nekt helped over 150 businesses with business development training and access to new markets. It also distributed $130,000 in the community as part of a microfinance program.
As CEO, Rollins spends her days greeting neighbors, hosting events, mentoring fellow small business owners, and promoting her own product business. But looking back, this is not quite where she thought she would be in her career.
Her entrepreneurial journey started when a doctor informed her of her daughter’s severe allergy to the chemicals found in many ethnic hair products. So she set out to create her own products under the name The Good Hair Shop and began giving demonstrations at a small mall kiosk in 2008. She demonstrated a new protective hair technique every weekend at the mall to showcase her products, unique in their emphasis on plant-based, non-toxic ingredients. With jars flying off the shelf, she was constantly putting in special orders with local suppliers to keep up with production demand.
Rollins moved into her first storefront in 2010, bounced between short-term locations, and finally landed in Westview in 2015, just two blocks from her home. She doubled down on her business as the accolades came rolling in. In 2012, Essence Magazine recognized The Good Hair Shop products nationally. In 2017, the products won the Manufacturer Excellence Award from Invest Atlanta.
As women from the neighborhood came to the shop to get their hair done and share stories, they also came to talk about the neighborhood, especially in 2017, when they heard of redevelopment plans for the West End Mall, catalyzed by recent investments in the nearby Atlanta Beltline. Most of the women were concerned about local businesses getting pushed out. They saw it happen in Grove Park, when Microsoft announced plans to move there. As president of the local business association, Rollins wanted better for Westview businesses.
In 2017, Rollins was hosting a meeting at her shop to push back against this threat when a stranger walked in the door holding a letter in his hand. She opened the letter; her landlord was evicting her from the storefront. She stayed calm but felt this pain deeply. She had spent years advocating for the community and its business owners, but who would advocate for her now?
A new idea began to take shape in her mind. What if she could create a space where local entrepreneurs could find temporary pop-up space for their businesses as well as practical advice and information for running their operations?
Three weeks later, she sat in an old car-repair garage owned by a local community member right down the street. The vacant space would be their new spot. She set up a folding table and chairs on the cement floor, pulled out a coffee pot and a few mugs, and sat with her friend to figure out what to do. She decided to put her hair product business aside for a time to figure out what the neighborhood truly needed.
The property owner agreed to a long-term lease, and in 2019 Rollins officially launched The Ke’nekt Cooperative. Local funders were not interested in funding start-up costs to renovate the space, so the neighborhood launched its own crowdfunding campaign to get started. Over the years, Ke’nekt has grown into a place where neighbors come for a cup of coffee or to co-work, and entrepreneurs come for business development training or to sell products. It’s also allowed Rollins to resume selling The Good Hair Shop products.
Since its launch in 2012, over 390 business owners have been featured at Ujamaafest. In 2024 alone, Ke’nekt helped 151 business owners with training, mentorship, and micro-grants.
Now philanthropy pays attention: A recent $250,000 grant from Common Futures means Ke’nekt has resources to support local businesses with new micro-grants this year. Visitors drop in from around the world to learn from this model. Recently, a man arrived from the Netherlands who had heard about Ke’nekt and wanted to bring the idea back to his own community.
Looking to the future, Rollins is hoping to secure a bigger space where the community can still come together, while also expanding technical assistance to more small business owners. But her original dream of creating and manufacturing her hair products and other small beauty product lines remains alive despite the setbacks of the past few years. After all: “I am a maker,” she says.
This piece is part of an ongoing series on women entrepreneurs addressing community and economic development needs through small-scale manufacturing.