Hair loss hardly is limited to one gender.

“So many times, I have women cry and just say, ‘Thank you for giving me my confidence back and making me feel comfortable to go out,’” Kristine Lewis said.

Her Hampton business, Creative Hair Solutions, does have male clients. But for the most part, she works on supplying the likes of wigs and their compact cousins, hair toppers, to a segment of the population that generally isn’t associated with needing them.

“As a woman, when you lose your hair, it takes everything away from you,” she said. “Our hair is our identity. So to give somebody her hair back, in a sense, really makes a huge difference for her self-esteem.”

The lifelong Shaler resident took over ownership in January, shortly after becoming a first-time mother at 27. And to make 2022 even more of a banner year, she is receiving a $10,000 grant through Comcast’s RISE — Representation, Investment, Strength and Empowerment — program to benefit small businesses.

Lewis plans to continue to modernize and make upgrades to her 3,000-square-foot space and “really make it feel like my place.”

She actually started working at Creative Hair Solutions 10 years ago, while attending the cosmetology program at A.W Beattie Career Center as a Shaler Area High School senior, and quickly developed quite a bit of enthusiasm.

“I’ve always wanted to help people. I never knew exactly what I wanted to do until this kind of fell into place,” she said.

Her help extends to those who have experienced lost of thinning hair through a variety of causes, from chemotherapy and radiation treatment to age and heredity, to trichotillomania, “a compulsive disorder where they actually pull their hair out.”

“Anything shocking to the body can cause hair loss,” Lewis said, and from her observations, that includes side effects of covid-19. “The clients who come here tend to have had covid worse. I saw one lady who lost probably a good 50% of her hair, just coming out in clumps.”

To rectify such situations, Lewis offers an assortment of stylish hats and turbans to go along with a wide selection of wigs and lighter, less-dense toppers.

“It just clips into the hair you have. You don’t have to have much, just something there,” she said about the latter.

As for wigs, clients have a choice of those made with synthetic material or the real thing.

“With human hair, you can curl it. You can color it. You can do whatever you want to it. Synthetic hair does not have that luxury,” Lewis said. “But the nice thing about it is when you wash it and let it air dry, it will always look the same. So there is absolutely no maintenance with synthetic.”

One aspect she stresses about Creative Hair Solutions is a sense of privacy. The location on Oxford Boulevard is somewhat off the beaten path, and inside are three spacious rooms for consultations with clients.

“No one’s in there watching you try on the wigs, except for whoever you want to bring with you,” Lewis said.

She credits her husband, Dalton, and parents, Cindy and Tom Hunkele, for supporting her decision to purchase the business and helping her achieve her vision for it, which in the future could include opening further locations.

“Really, what we do is special,” she said, “and there is nobody like us around.”

Related:

• Comcast awards $1 million in grants for small Pittsburgh businesses

• Pine, Franklin Park businesses among those receiving $10K Comcast ‘RISE’ grants

• Penn Hills, Verona businesses among those selected for Comcast RISE grant

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