When thinking of unique businesses in Berks County, one name immediately springs to mind for obvious reasons: Unique Snacks, known for its offbeat take on pretzels and other snacks. While they’re not as literally unique, these four Berks businesses — one manages wavy hair, one manages wavy water, one organizes themed sleepover events, one organizes themed catering events — are certainly distinctive.
A Salon Celebrating Curl Power
Texture Curl Bar
Jiolka Peralta found success by returning to her roots. Her hair’s roots.
The Reading High School and Alvernia University grad straightened her curls for much of her life. But that all changed when her daughter Emilia lost her hair when she was about five months old. Her locks were straight when they fell out; when they grew back in, they were curly.
“That pushed me to want to learn about curly hair and start educating myself,” says Peralta, “and then in the process, I went through my own journey learning about my curls.”
The Dominican Republic native began watching tutorials and engaging in conversations on social media. She then went natural, eventually enrolling at Empire Beauty School to get her license.
That multiyear journey led to the June 2021 opening of the Texture Curl Bar, a West Reading salon specializing in curly and natural hair. It’s the first of its kind in Berks County, according to the Exeter Township resident.
And she couldn’t have picked a better time to launch the venture. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused everyone to go natural for a few months out of necessity, inspired a return to authenticity.
“Times are changing and what’s perceived to be beautiful now is very different than what was perceived to be beautiful when we were growing up,” says Peralta, 33. “There’s a lot more self-awareness and self-acceptance and people wanting to be their authentic self. The pandemic pushed people into the trend of embracing our natural texture.”
At first, the Texture Curl Bar was a one-woman operation, but continued success has allowed Peralta to hire four additional stylists and expand business hours.
“I am blessed to have the staff that I do because they make this a lot easier for me,” she says. “I get pulled in many, many directions, so having a staff that I can count on and rely on makes the process a lot better for me.”
Only a little over a year after launching the business, Peralta was recognized by her alma mater for her success. In October 2022, Alvernia honored Peralta with a Four Under Forty Achievement Award, which recognizes the achievements of the university’s young alumni.
And she’s just getting started.
“I feel like over the past two years I went through what felt like a decade of growth in here,” she says. “I started with just me and one chair and now I have six chairs in here, four stylists. We’re dabbling in skin care now. We’re going to have an aesthetician. What I’m trying to do now is keep it all together and manage it all, because some days it can become overwhelming. Good overwhelming.”
723 Penn Avenue, West Reading
Making the DoubleTree by Hilton's Culture Portable
The Experience Elevation Team
Frequently honored by the hotel chain and patrons for their hospitality, the crew at the DoubleTree by Hilton in downtown Reading decided to take their show on the road. In the process, they created a sort of business within a business within a business.
The Experience Elevation Team has one goal, blatantly spelled out in its name. A spinoff of the Catering by DoubleTree Reading offshoot, the group aims to assure events at its homebase and all of the venues where it caters — including Berks Nature, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Kraras Hall of Wyomissing and the Reading Country Club — meet or exceed the hotel’s standards.
“It’s been in the works for a while, but we didn’t put a name to it until recently,” says Judy Engle, director of Brand Image Standards at the DoubleTree and one of five Experience Elevation Team members. “We were selected because we are a group of people who take culture seriously. If an idea has a benefit or can be expanded to become something greater, it’s given to the Experience Elevation Team to run with it.”
Whereas catering companies have a reputation for one-size-fits-all service, mainly out of necessity, the Experience Elevation Team’s work with its catering group offers more of a boutique feel, with every detail tailored to the venue.
Engle highlighted Berks Nature as an example. The conservation-focused nonprofit’s Reading headquarters are nestled in The Nature Place, a green building that features reclaimed wood and barn stone, recycled carpet, a stormwater collection and many more environmentally friendly features. The picturesque site is popular for business conferences, birthday parties and private events.
“It has a persona, and that persona is nature and conservation, and we are leaning into it and honoring it,” she says. “It’s taking an existing culture but honoring the persona of the venue that we’re at. So, we are looking at sustainable items to use as our service items: lightweight, back-to-nature dishes that look appropriate in the environment. It will be something entirely different than what we might have at the hotel or what we may stage at the GoggleWorks.”
It's not all food catering. In other cases, it’s catering to a type of guest.
The DoubleTree team recently created an area referred to as Paradise on Penn in front of the hotel, featuring smokers and grills, imported palm trees, fire pits, heating lamps and other attention-grabbing items. The goal is to entice patrons who are attending events at Santander Arena to walk across the street and check out the sights and smells. But it’s also utilized when they want to go the extra mile for their guests.
“If we’ve got a group like a bowling club from some part of the country,” Engle says, “we’ll put things outside like cornhole and say: ‘We’re putting this up for you. We’ll have the grill open for you. We’re taking care of your group.’”
701 Penn St., Reading
Finding Success Overnight
Let's Glamp LLC
Christy Roberts owes the existence of her business to TikTok, even though she doesn’t let her older children use it anymore.
During the summer of 2020, her youngest daughter discovered glamping parties while scrolling on the popular social media site and asked her mother if she could have one with a few close friends. The term is a portmanteau of glamorous camping, though it also can be used to describe elaborate sleepover parties featuring tents, decorations, party favors and other goodies.
Instead of paying astronomical fees to get the equipment shipped to her Spring Township house, Roberts built the frames for the tents herself, topping them off with bedsheets.
“I put it up on my personal Facebook page and my friends said, ‘Oh my God, that’s so cool,’” Roberts recalls. “And as I was researching her party I was like, ‘Holy cow, there are companies out here that actually do this.’”
After formulating a business plan over the following fall and winter, she launched Let’s Glamp LLC in the spring with a party for a friend’s daughter. Since then, she has organized hundreds of themed sleepovers in the area, with her busiest months featuring 15 to 20 parties.
The three dozen themes from which customers can choose include Harry Potter, Frozen, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barbie, Hallmark Movie, Winter Wonderland, Stranger Things, LEGO® and Elf on The Shelf. During certain times of the year, Roberts works with the Fightin Phils to offer a glamping sleepover at FirstEnergy Stadium.
“My goal is [for it] to be a jaw-dropping thing for the kids… and even the parents,” says Roberts, 47. “What stands out is the details. I put a lot of time, creativity, effort and research into this. Most tents will have fairy lights and something hanging from them to set them off. There are themed pillows, themed blankets. And each setup comes with snack trays featuring themed nameplates.”
The typical age range of her clientele is 7 to 12, though she has organized a few Sweet 16 celebrations and even a few adult parties.
Roberts owns all her materials, mostly purchased on Amazon and other online sites. Sometimes a friend or her children will help her set up and tear down, but for the most part, it’s a one-woman show.
“If you start researching this business platform, there are a ton of moms like me doing it across the country,” she says. “There’s a sleepover glamping queen in Arizona who makes over six figures a year doing this.”
Roberts is not there yet, squeezing in time for her side gig between a part-time job at Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories and a full-time job as a mother.
“My hope,” she says, “is that it will eventually become big enough so I can just do this.”
Slow Motion, Fast Growth
Seakeeper
Seakeeper is not lacking when it comes to setting lofty ambitions.
“Our goal is to fundamentally change the experience of being on a boat,” says Kelsey Barrett, director of marketing at the company, which innovates marine stabilization technology.
OK, then.
Founded in a Maryland garage in 2002 by John Adams and Shepard McKenney, one a Naval architect and the other a pioneer of joystick technology in boats, Seakeeper navigated some rough waters initially.
The company’s first gyro-stabilizer – which eliminates up to 95 percent of boat roll, the side-to-side motion that causes seasickness – hit the market in 2008 during the Great Recession. And boatbuilders they contacted weren’t sold on the product, insisting that people actually liked the motion of the ocean.
Some quick course correction helped the company get its sea legs.
“Instead of going to boat builders, what we did was go to the public, and we started refitting boats with the product,” Barrett says. “It was the consumers who ended up going to the builders to say, ‘Hey, I want your boat, but I’m going to go with this one because I can put a Seakeeper on it.’ So, they kind of created that demand working backward.”
Seakeeper’s ties to Berks County came through needing to locate a company that could handle the ultra-precise tolerances integral to the manufacturing of its products. It found that company, Joma Machine Company, in Mohnton. Due to high demand, Seakeeper soon became Joma’s sole client. The companies then decided to take the relationship to its logical conclusion, with Seakeeper purchasing Joma in 2011.
Seakeeper eventually outgrew and grew tired of its campus-like digs – lugging steel from building to building in the middle of Pennsylvania winters got old quickly. It found the type of large facility it sought in Leesport. A yearlong, piecemeal move to its new headquarters was completed earlier this year.
About 150 of the company’s 270 employees work at the Berks location. The rest of its workforce is spread out across the globe. Seakeeper has employees in Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, where it opened an office in 2018, allowing the firm to service its overseas customers without having to travel.
Last August it expanded into a new realm with the launch of Seakeeper Ride. Its flagship product is most effective when boats are at rest; the Ride cuts down on pitch and roll when boats are in motion.
“We would like to move into the territory of creating this image of motion control experts, so it’s not just one motion we can control,” Barrett says. “Think about air conditioning in cars. There was a time where that was an option, and now you would be hard-pressed to find roll-up windows or no air conditioning. Our long-term goal is to make people forget that boats used to roll.”
5460 Pottsville Pike, Leesport | seakeeper.com
