Providing mental health services in Phoenix, one haircut at a time

ClipDart Founder and CEO Kyle Parker has a vision for the future of hair care, one that addresses the lack of accessibility for people of color while improving overall mental wellness.

Prioritizing your mental health is crucial, but certain aspects, such as hair care, can easily be taken for granted. Working out, a balanced diet or maintaining a healthy sleep schedule may be the first things that come to mind when looking at ways to improve one's mental health.

Through the lens of intersectionality, however, it's easy to see that the industry does not equally cater to everyone. People of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, those struggling financially or who experience homelessness can be heavily affected by this lack of accessibility, Parker saw.

Having experienced a piece of this firsthand, Parker sought to address these issues through ClipDart, providing free, quality hair care to those in need. Today, those services are provided in 15 different states. Home base, however, is Arizona — ClipDart works with 30-plus non-profits throughout the state — and it all stems from human connections made in Phoenix when ClipDart was in its early planning stages.

Parker's path

Hailing from the south side of Chicago, Parker never had a hard time finding a barber that could get him looking right. Whatever cut he needed, he had access to it.

"I never had an issue finding a barber, finding a stylist. Just being from one of the most diverse cities in the world," Parker told the Arizona Republic. "You know, I went to a mostly black shop but if that wasn't available I could go to the Puerto Rican neighborhoods, the Mexican neighborhoods, Korean neighborhoods, there's always going to be somebody that can cut our type of hair."

As a young Black man growing up in the inner-city, barber shops served a deeper purpose, he said.

"Growing up in those type of communities, barber shops, hair salons are really cultural institutions. Places where they were hiring people struggling with homelessness, people struggling with mental illness, disabilities just to sweep the floors," Parker said. "Where I was from, these places were safe havens. There's not a lot of safe havens on the south side of Chicago."

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The shops around the city helped Parker realize their importance, not only as cultural cornerstones but as a form of therapy.

"When you're within a struggling community every day, it doesn't have to be south side of Chicago but pretty much anywhere you are, and you can go to a place like a barber shop, like a hair salon, it makes yourself feel whole and well and make you feel more like yourself. It's extremely important to your mental wellness," Parker said.

For 18 years, getting a haircut became a routine for Parker, that is until he moved to Grinnell College in Iowa to play basketball.

"With my naivety, that's the type of access that I thought I was just going to have for the rest of my life," Parker said with a laugh. "I lost complete access to any type of hair care out there. It was the complete opposite of the south side of Chicago."

The transition was quite a culture shock for Parker. During some of what he calls the "most opportune times" in his life, he felt he didn't look his best, taking a toll on his mental health.

This damaged Parker's confidence in terms of relationships, job interviews, housing interviews and his main outlet, basketball. It got to the point where his brother flew out to Iowa just to give him a haircut before a game, Parker shared.

At his wit's end, Parker knew something needed to be done, so he began to lay the foundation for a solution.

Actualizing a vision: The birth of ClipDart

Parker's initial vision was the way to solve the lack of access to proper hair care through the creation of an app with a function similar to Uber or DoorDash, but for a barber.

Development began in 2016, during his junior year of college, with plans to launch that year or in 2017. Eventually, as work continued, the app's release was pushed back, with a scheduled drop date of March 15, 2020.

However, that schedule would also fall through given the shutdown prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020.

"It was devastating, you know. For our team to work four straight years on this app, and then we just couldn't release it," Parker said.

Oddly enough, this would actually turn out to be a blessing for Parker and team, as the impact of COVID restrictions reopened his eyes to a larger problem.

"We were able to realize during that point in time, nobody was really getting haircuts, so we started to realize, 'What if you don't have a phone?' or 'What if you're not into technology," Parker said. "Our mission is not to just create this cool app, our mission is to improve mental wellness."

A difficult decision was then made to forgo the app — financially supported by Parker's professional basketball career in Germany — and make the pivot to a business-to-business model, in line with his main mission.

"Organizations across the world, colleges, wherever there could be that lack of access to hair care, we can partner with them," Parker said. "The business would take the cost, so it'd make it free for the people in need, and we were able to do the business that way and actually started to grow things incredibly."

With the refined direction, ClipDart would put on its first event at Luther College in Iowa, down the street from Parker's old stomping grounds.

"We partnered with them in 2020, and they've been getting haircuts twice a month since that time," Parker said.

Following its inaugural event, ClipDart would begin to blossom, partnering with upwards of 40 different schools across the country, according to Parker, with the goal to keep coming back.

"Ninety percent of those schools, we're there every single month. So it's not like we're just popping up, doing publicity stunts, taking cute pictures, but actually eliminating their hair care inequity," Parker said.

That frequency still holds today, as the 501C3 has expanded its reach far beyond just schools, going on to consistently partner with a slew of different businesses including hospitals, nursing homes and shelters.

Overall, ClipDart's reach has grown into 15 different states, with plans to go international by next year starting in England and Germany.

The Arizona connection

Though Parker is from Chicago, ClipDart's main headquarters are located in Phoenix.

The reasoning behind this is about as old as the non-profits' inception, as with plans to market his app — Parker wanted to shoot a commercial with his brother, a videographer, who lives in Phoenix.

With the location in mind, Parker began reaching out to a laundry list of local barbers to star in his promo.

"I think I might have messaged a hundred barbers through DM on Instagram just seeing if they wanted to be a part of the commercial," Parker said.

Only one person, Dre Flores, would respond, though. Luckily for Parker, Flores saw what he was trying to build and wanted to be a part of it.

"At this point, it was just the app. There was nothing about business-to-business, no non-profit, none of that. I pitched him on the idea, he loved it and so it began to grow with him," Parker said.

The first time the two met for the shoot, their partnership was practically meant to be.

"When I met Kyle, he had a bracelet on, and on this bracelet was actually my favorite bible verse that has kept me going through some of the ugliest chapters of my life," Flores said. "Being a man of faith, I was like, 'this is crazy, that's the sign.'"

So crazy, in fact, that a week later, Flores dropped everything to accompany Parker on a trip to New York in 2017 to recruit some East Coast barbers to the cause. On his own dime, too.

"He gave me the dates, I said I'll see you out there in New York City, bro," Flores said. "Next day I called him, I said 'I just bought the plane ticket, I'll see you out there next week.'"

Throughout that week, the pair would travel to around 300 barber shops within the state not only pushing a project but sowing the seeds for their eventual success.

"He never complained the whole time, he was just really focused on pushing the mission. So that's when I knew, around 2017 or 2018, that he'd be somebody who'd be with us for a long time and today. Without him, there's really no ClipDart," Parker said.

The partnership with Flores, who is now the Marketing Specialist and U.S. Team Lead for ClipDart, would prove crucial in establishing them as a serious player within the Grand Canyon State due to Flores' connections within the cutting community, making it easier to build out reliable teams to service those in need throughout the Valley.

One of those team members is Arizona Team Lead David Rodriguez, who joined in 2021 and quickly rose through the ranks.

"Having Kyle trust me so early, I feel even more grateful because I feel like he knew I had the abilities to do so, but I'm learning every day to be better with every little section," Rodriguez said. "I'm growing with the company, is what I like to say."

A note consistently echoed by the likes of Flores, Parker, and Rodriguez is that essence of growth, much of which comes from those they are caring for.

"We try to partner with anybody and everybody, so we can be reoccurring. We understand that consistency is key as well. If I can see you once or twice a month then we're really talking because then you feel comfortable, you look good, we have a connection, life starts changing just like that," Rodriguez said.

According to Parker, the non-profit currently has 40-plus partners throughout Arizona, with no plans of slowing down either. In June, ClipDart secured a $100,000 grant from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health to provide monthly haircuts over the next year at 13 different Senior Centers in Arizona's biggest county.

The grant, in large part, is a big signifier of the grounds ClipDart has continued to break over its less than two-year run as a non-profit, becoming the first hair care organization to receive the honor from the Department of Public Health.

The numbers justify it as well. Nationwide, ClipDart provided a total of 2,620 free haircuts in 133 appointments in 2022, a total that was subsequently smashed halfway through 2023, as the organization has provided over 3,600 free haircuts and counting this year.

"It really shows you the need and shows you that there's nobody else doing this on a high level," Parker said.

Those interested in attending an upcoming ClipDart event or are interested in joining the team can visit their website at ClipDart.com, downloading the ClipDart app or by following them on Instagram @clipdart.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kyle Parker sees the mental health benefits in a great haircut