12/06/2024
Atlantaโs Black-owned beauty brands seek stability and community
Black founders in skincare, haircare and makeup hope Atlanta becomes hub for beauty industry.
By Jewel Wicker - For the AJC
Beauty product developer Akuba Torvikey canโt envision a scenario where sheโd want to leave Georgia to move to New York, Texas or California, despite the fact that her field of work tends to be centralized in those places. Fortunately, sheโs so far achieved success in her career without having to relocate.
The UGA alumnus currently works as director of product development for PATTERN Beauty, the haircare line founded by actor Tracee Ellis Ross in 2019. Sheโs been with the company since December 2020, focusing on expanding its product offerings based on consumer insights, while also engaging in budgetary and regulatory conversations on behalf of the brand.
Landing the position during the COVID pandemic allowed Torvikey to take advantage of a time when businesses were trending toward remote work. โI remember being interviewed for PATTERN and there was weight in me being from Atlanta [and] me being a darker complexion [and having] kinkier hair, because thatโs not what you find professionally in L.A. [or] on the West Coast,โ she added.
Before 2020, she said she was negotiating a desire to remain in Atlanta even with the possible limitations her location preference might have on her career. โI wouldnโt have had the same opportunities if the pandemic hadnโt happened,โ she said.
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Atlanta is home to a number of Black-owned beauty brands that specialize in haircare, skincare and makeup. These companies range from direct-to-consumer brands such as Glosshood, The Doux, which is sold at Target and Walmart, and Range Beauty, which will launch on Sephora at the end of the month.
Beauty retailer Sephora recently pledged to increase the amount of shelf space it devotes to Black beauty products. (Dreamstime/TNS)
Credit: TNS
Beauty retailer Sephora recently pledged to increase the amount of shelf space it devotes to Black beauty products. (Dreamstime/TNS)
Still, these brands vary in what roles they need to fill in order to thrive and Torvikey said many companies still tend to hire for certain positions, including product development and formulation, out of state.
While Black beauty founders say they benefit from Atlantaโs reputation as a founder-friendly city, many are still fighting against systemic challenges faced by Black entrepreneurs and longing for a local ecosystem that can enable them to achieve long-standing stability beyond the startup phase.
Alicia Scott relocated from New York to Atlanta after an online list ranked Atlanta as the no. 1 place for Black women to successfully start a business. She founded Range Beauty, a plant-based makeup brand for โmelanin-rich, acne, and eczema-prone skinโ in 2018. Its products were sold online at Target starting in 2020, a year when the company generated roughly $330,000 in revenue.
Scott said after about 13 months of working with Target she went back to selling her products directly to consumers, after reflecting on the fact that her pricing was nearly double the other Black-owned brands that were being sold by the retailer. In 2022, Range Beauty appeared on Shark Tank and became the first makeup brand owned by a Black woman to score a deal.
SHARK TANK - โ1315โ โ Emma Grede, the CEO of fashion juggernaut Good American and founding partner of SKIMS, returns to the Tank as the first Black female guest Shark! First into the Tank are entrepreneurs from Atlanta, Georgia, who introduce their clean line of beauty products specially formulated for melanin-rich skin. A mom from Winterville, North Carolina, pitches her unique product to better tackle eliminating diaper odor; while entrepreneurs from Wichita, Kansas, present their healthy line of products made from an ancient superfood. A mom from Lafayette, Indiana, introduces her simple and reliable way to help new moms during their breastfeeding journey with her reusable design, on an all-new episode of โShark Tank,โ FRIDAY, FEB. 25 (8:00-9:01 p.m. EST), on ABC. (ABC/Christopher Willard)
MYISHA, ALICIA
Credit: ABC
SHARK TANK - โ1315โ โ Emma Grede, the CEO of fashion juggernaut Good American and founding partner of SKIMS, returns to the Tank as the first Black female guest Shark! First into the Tank are entrepreneurs from Atlanta, Georgia, who introduce their clean line of beauty products specially formulated for melanin-rich skin. A mom from Winterville, North Carolina, pitches her unique product to better tackle eliminating diaper odor; while entrepreneurs from Wichita, Kansas, present their healthy line of products made from an ancient superfood. A mom from Lafayette, Indiana, introduces her simple and reliable way to help new moms during their breastfeeding journey with her reusable design, on an all-new episode of โShark Tank,โ FRIDAY, FEB. 25 (8:00-9:01 p.m. EST), on ABC. (ABC/Christopher Willard) MYISHA, ALICIA
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In 2023, Scott joined the Sephora Accelerate Program for beauty founders. Despite this, she it was the hardest year for her business.
โLast year was the first year that I was like, oh, this is the real side of business that people talk about, where youโre literally like I canโt pay myself, I canโt pay my team, I might have to close my doorsโฆ Now what? My supply chain is messed up. We canโt get inventory,โ she said, noting the brand has been out of stock a majority of this year.
Despite her challenges, Scott credits a lot of her momentum and success to living in Atlanta. As a former client of the warehouse/workspace Saltbox, she said there are a number of spaces in the city where founders congregate and can share business advice. This year her relationship with Sephora will expand beyond the accelerator program and Range will launch on the retailerโs website Dec. 30.
Both nationally and locally, many other Black-founded beauty brands havenโt been as lucky.
Black-owned startups in general saw a significant increase in venture capital funding in recent years. In 2021, after many companies pledged to invest in Black businesses following the police killing of Georgia Floyd, Black-owned startups throughout the U.S. received nearly $5 billion in VC funding, according to data firm Crunchbase.
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Funding dropped to $2.4 billion in 2022, then to $705 million in 2023. Last yearโs 71% decrease marked the first time since 2016 that funding for Black-owned startups was less than $1 billion.
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In Atlanta, the 2023 decline was even worse, with funding decreasing by 79%.
The lack of funding is one of the reasons Black-owned beauty brands say theyโve struggled to expand their businesses, even when theyโve landed their products on the shelves of major retailers.
Sienna Brown, founder of Glosshood, was a part of the 2023 Sephora accelerator alongside Scott. Glosshoodโs lip products were previously sold at JC Penny, as a part of a partnership the brand had with the digital beauty retailer Thirteen Lune.
Customers try on makeup before they buy at Sephora counters around the nation. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) ORG XMIT: NYMA203
Customers try on makeup before they buy at Sephora counters around the nation. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) ORG XMIT: NYMA203
Today, the brand sells directly to consumers and Brown said heโs focused on scaling at a manageable pace after seeing many Black-owned brands shut down recently. โUnthinkable things have happened, so [Iโm] trying to prevent that for sure,โ she said.
Licensed cosmetologist Maya Smith launched The Doux in 2012, based on the needs of her salonโs clients. Her productsโ names pay homage to Smith and her husbandโs love of hip-hop. Smith believes her brandโs major retail success is because of the age of her brand and when she entered the market. Still, she acknowledges that other Black-owned beauty brands havenโt had the same experience.
โThere are a lot of infrastructure things that become barriers for us, and I would like to see more of the support on the financial side, on the infrastructure side, instead of just marketing our genius. We have to really start thinking about what we ask for when weโre approached by corporations and entities that want to highlight the brand,โ she said.
Over the summer, Spelman College hosted week-long Black Beauty STEMinist Lab Intensive and Symposia in partnership with Estรฉe Lauder.
Credit: Julie Yarbrough
Over the summer, Spelman College hosted week-long Black Beauty STEMinist Lab Intensive and Symposia in partnership with Estรฉe Lauder.
Beyond growing Atlantaโs entrepreneur scene within the beauty industry, Spelman College is working to create a pipeline for students interested in diversifying skincare, makeup and haircare through cosmetic chemistry.
Earlier this year, the HBCU expanded its STEM program to include a cosmetic concentration for chemistry majors, as well as a cosmetic science minor. The program started as a certificate in January 2023, but the college reported that applications grew from 150 to 750 in four terms.
Over the summer, the college hosted students from 15 colleges for a weeklong event called the Black Beauty STEMinist Lab Intensive and Symposia, in partnership with Estรฉe Lauderโs charitable arm. Leyte Winfield, director of Spelmanโs cosmetic science program, said students attended lectures in the morning then participated in lab work.
โThey got really in-depth with how you formulate products across a number of different platforms,โ she said. โThey formulated for skin [and] they formulated for hair. We formulated for fragrance, we did some color formulations, but we also talked about the chemical significance of all of the ingredients. We talked about fats versus oils, versus waxers, and they learned some terminology and understanding why we need surfactants as cleaners.โ
Alicia Scott said working with Black chemists has been crucial for Range.
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โItโs just the intention behind the work. Itโs being able to say, โOK, this is how hyperpigmentation shows up on our skin. What ingredients do you recommend to help combat that?โ I donโt want to do whatโs trending. I donโt want to do what everybody else is doing. I want to do something thatโs actually going to have efficacy and work on melanin-rich tones, and to be able to do that and [it] not get pushback.โ
Torvikey said Spelman โhas the potential to become that gravityโ of Atlantaโs developing beauty ecosystem by producing new talent and becoming a think tank for important conversations about the industry.
Brown said sheโs currently still taking a lot of meetings and attending events in Los Angeles and New York, but she is optimistic about Glosshood and the future of Atlantaโs beauty scene.
โOver the past maybe year or year and a half, I can say that Iโve seen some really incredible events take place here in Atlanta. And I think another thing that speaks to this is the fact that there was just SEPHORiA a few months back. So I think that things are changing, however, itโs not fully developed yet. But I think thereโs lots of space for development to occur.
Smith said the growing scene would have to be robust to accommodate the varying needs of beauty brands. Even with the haircare space, for instance, not all owners are coveting the same customers or even seeking out partnerships with major retailers.
โWeโre here, but even just because weโre all in [the] beauty space doesnโt necessarily even mean that we have the same needs,โ she said.
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