What can various hair illustration appear like within the gaming world? That’s the query The Doux Co-Founder Maya Smith got down to reply when she launched My Salon Empire, a tycoon-style hair salon sport now accessible on Roblox (a web based platform that permits customers to create avatars and construct digital worlds).
The free sport invitations Roblox gamers to handle their very own hair salon and serve purchasers, together with finishing consultations, shampooing and styling hair (with branded The Doux merchandise, after all), working towards hair-care methods and hiring workers. As gamers develop their salons, they’ll unlock upgrades, broaden stock and even scale to open a number of places. Customers also can go to salons created by different gamers.
Picture: Courtesy of The Doux
“It’s a very cool strategy to deliver our clients into The Doux world,” Smith tells Fashionista. “Once we began growing it, we considered easy methods to inform individuals the story of how The Doux began, which is within the salon. The salon is de facto the start of the existence of my whole profession as a hairstylist who launched a model from this tiny salon.”
She needed to present gamers as near a real-life expertise of operating a salon as doable, to the purpose of programming clients to complain if gamers function too slowly. “It truly is a real-life, enjoyable Roblox simulation of what salon life is,” Smith laughs. However what really makes My Salon Empire totally different from different related video games? Its range.
Smith says it was essential that the expertise highlight a broad vary of hairstyles and textures, particularly for coily and kinky hair sorts. Hair range in video video games is infamously lackluster, with Black coiffure choices typically restricted. My Salon Empire addresses this hole by that includes dozens of textured hairstyles, together with fades, afros, braids, twist-outs, blowouts and protecting types.
Picture: Courtesy of The Doux
“It was essential to me to guarantee that the individuals who had been taking part in it could see themselves represented within the sport and that individuals who didn’t know a lot about textured hair would have a chance to be uncovered to what that’s like,” she says. Different hair textures — curly, wavy and straight — and types are included, too. All of the avatars are multicultural, so anyone can see themself within the sport, Smith emphasizes.
However spotlighting various hairstyles was just one a part of the equation. Smith additionally desires My Salon Empire to be an academic expertise: As customers undergo the hair upkeep course of, they be taught which merchandise are applicable for every fashion and why. For instance, if a person is styling a twist out, they are going to be proven the suitable merchandise to make use of for that fashion. (And sure, gamers should buy The Doux merchandise instantly from Roblox for use in actual life.)
Picture: Courtesy of The Doux
“Our aim at The Doux is all the time to create one thing that provides worth to our clients and that exposes individuals to the tradition of hair care,” Smith explains. “It’s actually formidable to me that, nonetheless in 2026, how many individuals are simply studying about totally different textures of hair and what the salon expertise is like for individuals with textured hair.”
It’s taken almost a yr to deliver My Salon Empire to life: The idea started as a mere joke between Smith and her household. “I’m a mother of 5 and have a household stuffed with avid gamers,” she says. “This was a kind of issues the place we had been like, ‘Ha ha, what if we did a Roblox sport?'” It wasn’t till Roblox and Exclusible — the studio behind branded Roblox experiences — reached out that Smith realized this “joke” may turn into a actuality.
From the start of the partnership, Smith and her workforce had been hands-on with the event course of. “Each single coiffure, the salon journey, each shade, each tile, every bit of the sport — it wasn’t a plug-and-play; it was one thing that was designed by me and my workforce,” she shares.
Picture: Courtesy of The Doux
Probably the most difficult side was translating the various hairstyles and numerous textures right into a digital format, she confesses. The tech builders had been a worldwide workforce, so there have been cultural nuances in hairstyling that Smith didn’t account for: “I began to be taught in these conversations that the way in which that we see hair, like what you name an ‘Afro’ abroad and what we take into account an ‘Afro’ right here, could also be totally different [ideas],” she says. “Speaking our inventive imaginative and prescient to individuals who haven’t labored in a salon was a problem.”
The ache factors had been definitely worth the endurance, although: My Salon Empire turned out precisely how Smith envisioned it. And she or he’s already pondering of its future capabilities.
“I’m actually, actually hopeful about the way forward for this sport as a result of there are such a lot of locations that it might go, not solely Roblox, however on different platforms,” she says. “I’m extraordinarily pleased with what we’ve been in a position to accomplish and actually grateful for the workforce of individuals at The Doux that helped me get this off the bottom.”
