Better heads than reds.

• Author: Hetzer, Michael
• Position: Paulette Agha opens Carolina Cosmetology Inc. joint venture in Soviet Union

BETTER HEADS THAN REDS

Memorial Day weekend, 1988. A holiday to honor those who have fallen defending the United States of America.

Paulette Agha was at home in Clemmons, relaxing in her favorite chair, watching a TV news report on shortages in the Soviet Union. In the U.S.S.R., President Mikhail Gorbachev's new policy of openness - glasnost - was transforming the Soviet political climate.

"This thing came on about perestroika, glasnost and all that Gorbachev was doing to change the way things are there," Agha recalls. These were things remote from the life of a North Carolina cosmetologist. But a Moscow street scene flickered across the screen, and what she saw brought the Russians' lives suddenly close to home.

"There was this picture of a lady busting up pavement, loading the big chunks of asphalt on the truck. And it was obvious this woman worked hard. And there were these pictures of people in line to buy things. You know, those women are really not a lot different from women here who work, have families and don't have a lot of time for themselves. God knows, they need a hairdresser! It would make them feel better, and I didn't understand why somebody hadn't done that."

How did she know nobody had? "I hate to tell you it's obvious, but it's obvious just looking at them," she says. "The women in line needed their hair done. It was just hanging there. They didn't have any makeup. They're maybe 30 years back in time in hairdressing."

So Paulette Agha, a Lancaster, S.C., native and a cosmetology instructor at Guilford Technical Community College, decided to do something about it herself: She would come up with a line of beauty products and market them to the Soviets. That decision has led her to U.S./Soviet trade conferences, on a 6,500-mile trip to Moscow and deep into the sophisticated world of international trade. "It's been a serious learning experience," Agha says. "I've never known anything about East-West trade. I've never known anything about the Soviet Union. I can talk hair, OK?"

The day after Agha saw the news clip, she spotted a story in the Greensboro News & Record about U.S./Soviet trade. Quoted in the article was Soviet-trade consultant Suzanne Stafford, who is based in Colfax, about 10 miles west of Greensboro. The next day, she phoned her.

"My first reaction was, `Is she kidding?'" Stafford says. "She dreamed this thing up by herself? When I met her a few days later, I saw this little bleached blonde and I thought, `This...