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Robert Caplin for The New York Times
Ricky Kenig is the founder of Ricky’s, a chain of beauty supply stores with a downtown feel and plans to expand nationally.
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UP five floors, past the receptionist and a row of eager job applicants,
is the Chelsea office of Ricky Kenig, the founder and creative director
of Ricky’s, the funky beauty-store chain known for glitter, wigs and a
colossal assortment of hair products.
Topped with a close crop of salt-and-pepper hair, the 49-year-old Mr.
Kenig is quirky, boisterous and immediately affable. He rattled off a
welcome (“Please have a seat, any seat. Want some water?”), dissected
his outfit (a cartoonish black-and-white shirt and Balmain jeans) and
gave a tour (photos of him with Kelly Ripa, Jason Wu and Lil Jon) — all
at a quick clip that would impress Woody Allen.
“I have a shopping problem,” he said within five minutes of
introduction. One wall was lined floor-to-ceiling with hair clips,
cosmetic sponges and other makeup tools. “I buy multiples of everything.
It used to be twos. Then, I skipped threes and went right to fours.”
He pointed to his oxford shirt by Supreme, emblazoned with repeating images of Snow White.
“I have this same shirt in gray and two more at home in a Ziploc bag,” he said.
His energy, which he described as manageable attention deficit disorder
with a compulsive tic, is the kind that moves, amuses and dominates —
sometimes all at once. It’s also the creative zeal that has fueled the
Ricky’s stores, beloved by the city’s stylists, makeup artists, designers, drag queens and downtown girls for its zany mood.
“I’m not a corporate guy,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to take a corporate
guy backstage at a fashion show. They’ll be handing out business cards
left and right. The makeup artists, they’re really artists.”
Even so, he’s had a measure of corporate success, in part by cornering the city’s market for high-end salon products and
Halloween
costumes. Ricky’s is also undergoing something of a growth spurt,
moving beyond its New York City backyard into places like East Hampton,
N.Y., and Miami Beach. In the last two years, the chain has opened 6
stores, and now totals 28.
There is also a new chief executive, Richard Krantz, a retail veteran
who was appointed in April, replacing Mr. Kenig’s younger brother, Todd.
The plan is to expand nationally, starting with a second shop in South
Beach this summer.
“Retail runs in my veins,” Mr. Kenig said.
His father, Al Kenig, opened Love drugstores, a New York chain, in the
1970s. It has since closed. His mother, Milly Kenig, who died in 2000,
ran a clothing and beauty store called Daphne Snodgrass in Rockland
County, N.Y., where Mr. Kenig grew up.
“The neighborhood was all Hasidic Jews,” said Mr. Kenig, who is Jewish
himself but not religious. “It was such a weird place. I couldn’t wait
to get out and move to the city.”
With the exception of two years at the University of Arizona (“I like to
say I was just visiting,” he said, grinning), Mr. Kenig has lived in
New York, where he spent his early 20s working seven days a week at
Love’s original store, at East 64th Street and Third Avenue. While his
father focused on the nuts and bolts, Mr. Kenig sensed an opportunity in
an untapped demographic: the city’s thriving gay population.
“My father was a little bit old school,” he said. “He was in the beauty
business, but he was also selling odds and ends like hangers. I think he
was a little uncomfortable with the beauty world, because for men, it’s
all gay.”
“I was very comfortable in my own skin,” added Mr. Kenig, a
twice-divorced father of three daughters (18-year-old twins and a
7-year-old), who live with him in a sleek modern apartment in TriBeCa.
(The mother of the twins is a manager at a Ricky’s store in Brooklyn.)
With his father’s support, Mr. Kenig opened the first Ricky’s at 718
Broadway in Greenwhich Village in 1989. It channeled 1980s street
culture: loud neon signs, large television monitors and a Pop Art logo
of a pink and blue toothpastelike tube.
Ricky’s was an instant hit with the downtown creative set. The
photographer Steven Meisel was an early customer, as were other fashion
insiders who relied on Mr. Kenig to stock products that big chains
deemed too niche. When Mr. Meisel wanted bobby pins with a matte black
finish, Mr. Kenig used sandpaper to create the desired look.
That kind of customer feedback led Mr. Kenig to produce his own line of
Rickycare products, which includes such seemingly esoteric products as a
magnetic wristband for hairpins, a three-finger heat-resistant glove
for handling hair irons and a dizzying assortment of bottles, jars and
applicators.
His No-Crease clips were inspired by trips backstage at fashion shows,
where he noticed that hairstylists were tucking tissue paper under bobby
pins to avoid creasing the hair. He designed a clip with extra padding.
“Guido Palau has taken a liking to them,” Mr. Kenig said, referring to a well-known hair stylist.
“Anybody can go to Amazon and buy anything now,” he said. “But we’re
about the experience. We still believe in getting the product in the
right people’s hands, and if they vouch for it, that’s all you need.”
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