Mattice Beauty Supply has a new owner. She wants to meet you
A new owner is taking over Central Tacoma’s most well-known beauty supply store after its original owner died unexpectedly last year.
Mattice Beauty Supply sat empty for months after its namesake, Mattice Hoyt, died in November 2025. Come Feb. 28, customers can expect to see the beloved store’s doors open again, now under the helm of Champaine McNair.
McNair, 27, said she plans to run the store with the same focus on giving back to the community that Hoyt had when she ran the business.
Hoyt was known as the “unofficial mayor of Tacoma,” and her store was one of the only Black-owned beauty supply stores in the area – a type of store that’s largely patronized by Black women. Her nickname was the result of her passion for civic engagement and her desire to give back to her community, ideals that were baked into her store.
She set aside a room to serve as a gathering space for events and classes that she offered on a sliding pay scale, and she was intentional about stocking her store with as many Black-owned brands as she could.
McNair has no plans to change that. The new owner grew up in Seattle volunteering at women’s shelters and has experience working in gun-violence prevention, so she said she’s no stranger to the ideals of “community give-back” that Hoyt’s store were founded on. She purchased the business from Hoyt’s husband, Chris Hoyt, after he announced he was selling it in December.
Chris Hoyt said he didn’t feel he was equipped to run the business on his own. When he listed it for sale, he heard from a number of interested buyers, but it was McNair’s values that led him to sell the business to her, he said.
“Mattice’s business ethic was community over competition,” Hoyt told The News Tribune. “And that’s really the kind of what Champaine also was talking to me about.”
McNair didn’t know Hoyt personally, but she knew of her through her social-media presence and friends and family who shopped at the store.
Born and raised in Seattle, McNair moved to Tacoma in 2023 with her husband and three kids, hoping for her family to have more space in a more affordable city and to be closer to her in-laws who have lived in Tacoma for years.
“When I seen her husband post that the store was available and the business was up for sale – something spoke to me,” McNair told The News Tribune. “It was a decision that came to me with zero hesitation.”
She already knew it was the right decision, and it was only solidified when she went to meet Chris Hoyt and see the store in person with her family. Her oldest son is nonverbal and autistic, she said, and he doesn’t always enjoy meeting new people and being in new places. But when they went to the store and met Chris Hoyt, her son was immediately comfortable.
“It just really clarified things – this is what’s for me,” she said.
Plans for Mattice Beauty Supply
McNair said she plans to maintain Mattice Beauty Supply as more than just a beauty supply store, a “home for the community.” Her vision doesn’t stray much from Hoyt’s vision, she said. She wants to maintain the workshops and pop-up events and stock the same brands Hoyt did.
Customers might notice changes at the store, but minimal ones. Hoyt was open about how business was tough for her, and McNair knows it won’t be easy. She plans to tackle the challenge with expanded store hours and a new point-of-sale system, and is exploring making a website and offering in-store pickup and delivery.
“I’m not at all going to say that I think it’s going to be easy, because I definitely don’t,” McNair said. But she’s optimistic about what’s to come.
McNair, who coaches a step team at Curtis High School, also hopes to start another step-dance team open to any Tacoma youth that could practice out of the store.
“I want to pour into our youth and build their confidence in all aspects, in every way that I can,” she said.
The interior might also look different because much of the decor in the store was art that belonged to Hoyt that her husband plans to keep – but it’ll still be called Mattice Beauty Supply, McNair said.
McNair knows Hoyt left big shoes to fill.
“I am going to do my best to walk alongside the path that she has already created and laid out for me, and honor her the best way that I can, and that’s keeping the store open and running, and keeping the doors open for community to know that they always have a home there,” McNair said.
McNair will host a “meet the owner” event on Feb. 21 at 4 p.m., and a grand reopening on Feb. 28 with a ribbon cutting at noon.
Mattice Beauty Supply, 3906 S. 12 St., will be open from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, starting Feb. 28.
