What can diverse hair representation look like in the gaming world? That’s the question The Doux Co-Founder Maya Smith set out to answer when she launched My Salon Empire, a tycoon-style hair salon game now available on Roblox (an online platform that allows users to create avatars and build virtual worlds).
The free game invites Roblox players to manage their own hair salon and serve clients, including completing consultations, shampooing and styling hair (with branded The Doux products, of course), practicing hair-care techniques and hiring staff. As players grow their salons, they can unlock upgrades, expand inventory and even scale to open multiple locations. Users can also visit salons created by other players.
Photo: Courtesy of The Doux
“It’s a really cool way to bring our customers into The Doux world,” Smith tells Fashionista. “When we started developing it, we thought about how to tell people the story of how The Doux started, which is in the salon. The salon is really the beginning of the existence of my entire career as a hairstylist who launched a brand from this tiny salon.”
She wanted to give players as close to a real-life experience of running a salon as possible, to the point of programming customers to complain if players operate too slowly. “It really is a real-life, fun Roblox simulation of what salon life is,” Smith laughs. But what truly makes My Salon Empire different from other similar games? Its diversity.
Smith says it was crucial that the experience spotlight a broad range of hairstyles and textures, especially for coily and kinky hair types. Hair diversity in video games is infamously lackluster, with Black hairstyle options often limited. My Salon Empire addresses this gap by featuring dozens of textured hairstyles, including fades, afros, braids, twist-outs, blowouts and protective styles.
Photo: Courtesy of The Doux
“It was very important to me to make sure that the people who were playing it would see themselves represented in the game and that people who didn’t know much about textured hair would have an opportunity to be exposed to what that is like,” she says. Other hair textures — curly, wavy and straight — and styles are included, too. All the avatars are multicultural, so anybody can see themself in the game, Smith emphasizes.
But spotlighting diverse hairstyles was only one part of the equation. Smith also wants My Salon Empire to be an educational experience: As users go through the hair maintenance process, they learn which products are appropriate for each style and why. For example, if a user is styling a twist out, they will be shown the right products to use for that style. (And yes, players can purchase The Doux products directly from Roblox to be used in real life.)
Photo: Courtesy of The Doux
“Our goal at The Doux is always to create something that adds value to our customers and that exposes people to the culture of hair care,” Smith explains. “It’s really daunting to me that, still in 2026, how many people are just learning about different textures of hair and what the salon experience is like for people with textured hair.”
It’s taken nearly a year to bring My Salon Empire to life: The concept began as a mere joke between Smith and her family. “I’m a mom of five and have a family full of gamers,” she says. “This was one of those things where we were like, ‘Ha ha, what if we did a Roblox game?'” It wasn’t until Roblox and Exclusible — the studio behind branded Roblox experiences — reached out that Smith realized this “joke” could become a reality.
From the beginning of the partnership, Smith and her team were hands-on with the development process. “Every single hairstyle, the salon journey, every color, every tile, every piece of the game — it wasn’t a plug-and-play; it was something that was designed by me and my team,” she shares.
Photo: Courtesy of The Doux
The most challenging aspect was translating the diverse hairstyles and various textures into a digital format, she confesses. The tech developers were a global team, so there were cultural nuances in hairstyling that Smith didn’t account for: “I started to learn in those conversations that the way that we see hair, like what you call an ‘Afro’ overseas and what we consider an ‘Afro’ here, may be different [ideas],” she says. “Communicating our creative vision to people who haven’t worked in a salon was a challenge.”
The pain points were worth the patience, though: My Salon Empire turned out exactly how Smith envisioned it. And she’s already thinking of its future capabilities.
“I’m really, really hopeful about the future of this game because there are so many places that it can go, not only Roblox, but on other platforms,” she says. “I’m extremely proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and really grateful for the team of people at The Doux that helped me get this off the ground.”
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