Black beauty brand founders are facing waning support.
Founders and executives told WWD that the galvanization they saw in the wake of George Floyd’s murder has decelerated, largely in terms of retail support and investment, though not in terms of consumer sentiment.
“Every year since 2020, we’ve seen a rollback of the support and investment into Black and BIPOC-owned brands,” said Ron Robinson, founder and chief executive officer of BeautyStat. “I think it’s only gotten more significant under this new presidential administration.”
“Eight out of 10 BIPOC-owned businesses fail within the first 18 months of launch,” said Piyush Jain, chief executive officer of Maesa, which introduced the Maesa Magic Incubator to provide grants and mentorship to underrepresented founders. That program is now in its third year. “One cause is lack of mentorship, the other is lack of role models, and the third is funding.”
The situation has become even more acute under the current presidential administration, which has actively rolled back DEI policies at a federal level, and taken legal action to do the same at universities across the country.
More localized to beauty, part of the issue is the number of retailers, in particular, and the wider business landscape that have rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives against the fast-changing political backdrop.
During its first-quarter earnings call in May, Target Corp. cited a broader shift away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the top of the year as a key contributor to single-digit sales dips, in addition to on-again, off-again tariffs. More specifically, Target ended its Racial Equity Action and Change initiatives, and changed the moniker of its “Supplier Diversity” team to “Supplier Engagement.”
Elsewhere in the mass market, Walmart stopped participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Index, and agreed to drop the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion as well as products marketed to transgender children.
On the prestige beauty side, the news is more positive. Both Sephora and Ulta Beauty have signed the Fifteen Percent Pledge, an Aurora James-founded initiative to dedicate 15 percent of shelf space to Black-owned brands and seem committed to attaining that goal.
Founders also report investors pulling back in some cases.
As WWD reported in 2024, Black-owned brands were among the first to feel the drought of a waning M&A market. For some, the picture is still grim. Crunchbase data, additionally, indicates that funding for Black-founded startups in the U.S. fell from $4.9 billion in 2021 to $700 million in 2024.
“We haven’t had the growth scale that typical VC firms want. It’s difficult to expect that from founders that are Black-owned because we’re already at a disadvantage, we don’t have the same resources and we don’t have the same capital,” said Denis Asamoah, Forvr Mood, which he cofounded with Jackie Aina. He acknowledged that the brand was on track to meet its sales targets for 2025.
“It just seems like there’s always a moving of the goalposts with Black founders, and what we’ve been able to build and create has been nothing short of incredible,” Aina said. “It raises questions of what’s required of non-Black founders versus Black founders.”
“It’s hard right now in general — you can’t ignore the macroeconomic pressures and general uncertainty. For small brands that’s even more challenging,” said Alisa Carmichael, partner at VMG Partners, who oversees VMG’s Parity Collective in partnership with James, an investment initiative that specializes in BIPOC brands. “Also, the rollback from a DE&I perspective have made people in the ecosystem a bit more nervous.”
Melissa Butler, founder and chief executive officer of The Lip Bar, characterized the landscape overall as generally tough. “Investors are afraid to deploy capital,” she said. “M&A hasn’t been very active. That’s true for every founder, and then you have to add on what I call the ‘Black tax’ on top of it.”
Part of that, Butler said, was the persistent misconception that Black-owned brands are designed solely for Black consumers.
“Oftentimes, a Black founder will centralize a Black person in their advertising because your community deserves to be seen and it’s an underserved community,” Butler said. “The unfortunate truth is that can oftentimes lead to you only attracting Black customers. With the Lip Bar, for instance, there’s no difference between my lips and a white woman’s lips or an Asian woman’s lips.”
That phenomenon has also impacted the financial community.
“Everyone was so focused on investing in Black-owned brands with COVID and the murder of George Floyd,” said one investor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Now, we’re in this phase where saying you’re Black-owned can be a disadvantage because shoppers wonder if the product is for them, if they should be buying it, or if it’s cultural appropriation.”
Conversely, brands that keep their appeal broad are reaping the benefits. “Yes, I’m a Black female founder and this is a Black-founded brand, but the ethos of the brand has always been that it’s about everybody,” said Danessa Myricks, who founded Danessa Myricks Beauty. “Our whole perspective is that everybody is able to participate and feel they’re in a safe space.”
Added Robinson, “I’m front-facing on TikTok, and a lot of people didn’t even necessarily know that I was the founder until I started to do more on social. We have all these clinicals, all these patents, and that brings people into the brand. On the consumer side, I’m not seeing people pulling back from support.”
Other brands agreed that it’s not an issue of consumer perception. “The challenge is that the strategy should always be inclusive,” said Butler. “I think consumers are already in tune with that, but it’s the retailers, investors, strategics and private equity groups that are a little behind in terms of how consumers are looking at beauty today.
“I don’t think it’s consumers that are shifting,” Butler continued. “Especially when you look at the population, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are the most diverse and the most open to diversity. I think it’s an old guard saying they followed the rules in 2020, and now, they’re onto the next.”
