Aundrea Booker has always loved to do hair. After high school, she briefly attended beauty school but needed to step away and focus on her family. Once she moved to LaCrosse, she was able to fully focus on school and has been a licensed cosmetologist for the last 22 years.
Nine and a half years ago, she and Kiauna Montgomery bought Simple Cuts Salon from its previous owner. They met working at the shop and wanted to take it over.
Simple Cuts is located at 2402 East Washington Ave. Her experience as a stylist is a part of the reason why she created her hair care product line, Tre-Azure.
On Sunday, July 16, Booker will host a launch party for that line of hair care products from 1:00-4:00 pm at the Goodman Community Center in the Brassworks building. She wanted to create hair care products because she understands that a lot of people don’t know how to maintain their hair.
“I call my company ‘your healthy hair partner’,” she said. “It can be a lot of trying to take care of your hair. My products are geared towards people with textured hair, so that they can have salon quality products and tools to maintain their hair at home, in between their salon visits.”
After a year of tremendous loss and grief, Booker wanted to push herself and create this hair care line. She named the company after her granddaughter who passed away only 11 days after being born. Her name was Treasure.
“That’s where I got Tre-Azure from, to name the line,” Booker said. “It’s her namesake and I felt like I didn’t want her name to go away or anything. I felt like giving the company that name, I would not let it fail.”
She launched her website earlier this month for pre-sales only of her first collection, Satin to Silk. This set includes products that help straighten textured and curly hair. Pre-sales for this collection will continue until July 17.
When creating this set and her other products, she took time to experiment and source with materials she felt would be fit for her clients.
“For me, I didn’t just grab some products and slap my name on them,” she said. “I had to source and try different stuff over time to see how it works. And that was a lot of work before I even actually thought about having a product.”
The Satin to Silk collection comes with a blow drying brush, used while blow drying as alternative to using a blow dryer with an attachment that consistently falls off. Booker also included a vibrating ceramic flat iron and helps the stylist tug less on the hair strands while straightening.
In the kit is also a thermal heat protective spray, which can be used on wet or dry hair before blow drying or flat ironing. It can also be used to create more shine on hair.
Booker is excited for the launch party and is looking forward to community members joining her in celebrating the creation of her products.
“I’m just excited for people to come out and see the product line and the start of the company,” she said. “I think it’s gonna be something amazing. It’s open to anybody that stops by, it’s not a formal thing. I have appetizers and stuff. I have someone coming to perform a spoken word piece on texture and It’s gonna be a good time and good energy and good networking. I just want anybody that wants to come to stop by.”
To learn more about her products, visit the Tre-Azure website.
