East Texas Barber Opens His Own Shop in Lufkin with Small Business Lending

Edwin “Yogi” Cruz has cut hair since he was 19. For the first time since 2020, he’s doing it in a shop he owns. Yogi’s Haircuts opened this summer on Denman Avenue in Lufkin, Texas, six years after Cruz sold the barbershop he built in Beaumont and started over. A client’s business card and a connection to Communities Unlimited (CU) turned into a loan, a building, and a second chance.

“I feel like it’s grace,” Cruz said. “Good foundation and good people wanting to help somebody. They see something in me.”

Cruz got into barbering at 19, on a coworker’s suggestion, while waiting tables. He was newly sober then. He’s now 33 years into recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous, and the barber school he enrolled in built its program around people rebuilding their lives.

A Career Built Chair by Chair

“Cutting hair is part of the rehabilitation process, learning a skill,” Cruz said. “I liked it. I enjoyed it.”

That training became Hair Express, a Beaumont barbershop Cruz bought with savings from his barbering income, paid off over 10 years, and owned and ran for 23 years. Then came 2020. The pandemic hit personal grooming businesses hard. Cruz sold the building, moved with his mother to Killeen, then to Lufkin, chasing the feel of East Texas he’d missed. He spent the next several years cutting hair as an employee at a Great Clips franchise, rebuilding a client base from nothing in a town where nobody knew his name yet.

He didn’t just build a client list. In his spare time, Cruz started showing up at community events dressed as a clown and offered free haircuts and grooming to homebound residents and kids with disabilities. Between the chair and the volunteer work, he became a familiar face in Lufkin fast.

Clients started asking for him by name, waiting two to three hours for his chair while five other barbers’ chairs sat empty.

“I see there’s potential,” Cruz remembers thinking. “Maybe I can do this again as my own business.”

The Business Card That Started Everything

The push came from an unlikely source. A young client sat in Cruz’s chair for an hour, then asked, out of nowhere, whether Cruz had ever thought about opening his own shop again.

“With what?” Cruz remembers answering. “All my savings are gone. I have no money.”

The client left a business card. Cruz set it aside. Two months later, the same young man came back for another haircut and asked why Cruz hadn’t called. That client, Andrew Harmon, works as a Program Officer with the T.L.L. Temple Foundation in Lufkin. Harmon connected Cruz with CU.

Turning Decades of Experience Into a Business Plan

CU paired Cruz with Management Consultant Joe Meszaros and Senior Management Consultant James Custer from the Entrepreneurship Team. They met with him weekly to turn three decades of barbering experience into a business plan, something Cruz had never put on paper before.

“I had a business before, but I did it on blind faith,” Cruz said. “I never sat down to talk to another person, and they guided me. They told me the good and the bad and the not so good. It was honest.”

The work covered more than Cruz expected: a logo, pricing that stayed affordable for his clients without underpricing his own work, an advertising plan, business insurance, and a storefront on a busy stretch in Lufkin, a 0.57-acre commercial lot that gave him room to eventually rent a second chair to another barber.

“There was a lot,” Cruz said. “A lot I was not aware of.”

Closing the Loan and Opening the Doors

CU’s small business lending in East Texas connected Cruz with Senior Economic Development Loan Officer Chris Ranniger from the Lending Team, who worked with Cruz on a loan that closed in May, covering the building purchase plus a cushion of working capital to get him through his first slow months.

CU’s loan also included extra funds to replace the front door, add a hair-wash sink, put on a new roof, finish electrical and HVAC work, and install a street sign. CU’s Entrepreneurship and Lending work in East Texas is made possible through an investment by the T.L.L. Temple Foundation.

Getting the Word Out in Lufkin

Cruz is putting his own habits to work getting the word out, too. He’s joined the Lufkin Chamber of Commerce and is looking into advertising with a local H-E-B grocery store. Mostly, though, he’s counting on the same thing that filled his chair at Great Clips: word of mouth from customers who already wait in line for him.

At 58, Cruz says opening Yogi’s Haircuts feels less like a fresh start and more like a way back to the version of himself.

“I can either choose fear or I can choose joy. So I choose not to be fearful. It’s never too late to start a business and it’s a beautiful day to restart my life. This will help me transcend to a different level, maybe into a new income bracket. It’s given me a sense of wholeness again. I’m very grateful.”

Stories like Cruz’s reflect the broader work CU does alongside rural entrepreneurs across the region — and its commitment to sustainable prosperity for small business owners in communities like Lufkin.