Beauty product developer Akuba Torvikey can’t envision a scenario where she’d 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, she’s so far achieved success in her career without having to relocate.
The UGA alumnus works as director of product development for PATTERN Beauty, the hair care line founded by actor Tracee Ellis Ross in 2019. She’s 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.
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. Landing the position during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed Torvikey to take advantage of a time when businesses were trending toward remote work. “I 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 that’s not what you find professionally in L.A. (or) on the West Coast,” she added.
Atlanta is home to a number of Black-owned beauty brands that specialize in hair care, skin care 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 at Sephora before year’s end.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Still, 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 Atlanta’s reputation as a founder-friendly city, many are still fighting against systemic challenges faced by Black entrepreneurs and longing for an 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 the Georgia capital as the No. 1 place for Black women to successfully start a business. She founded Range Beauty, a plant-based makeup brand for “melanin-rich, acne, and eczema-prone skin” 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 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.
Credit: ABC
Credit: ABC
In 2023, Scott joined the Sephora Accelerate Program for beauty founders. Despite this, she says it was the hardest year for her business.
“Last year was the first year that I was like, oh, this is the real side of business that people talk about, where you’re literally like I can’t pay myself, I can’t pay my team, I might have to close my doors … Now what?” 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 to living in Atlanta, a city with spaces where founders congregate and share business advice. This year her relationship with Sephora will expand, with Range launching on the retailer’s website Dec. 30.
Nationally and locally, many other Black-founded beauty brands haven’t 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 George Floyd, Black-owned startups throughout the U.S. received nearly $5 billion in VC funding, according to data firm Crunchbase.
Funding dropped to $2.4 billion in 2022, then to $705 million in 2023, Last year’s 71% decrease marked the first time since 2016 that funding for Black-owned startups was less than $1 billion.
In Atlanta, the 2023 decline was even worse, with funding decreasing by 79%.
Lack of funding is one of the reasons Black-owned beauty brands say they’ve struggled to expand their businesses, even when they’ve landed their products with major retailers.
Sienna Brown, founder of Glosshood, was part of the 2023 Sephora accelerator alongside Scott. Glosshood’s lip products were sold at JCPenney, as part of a partnership the brand had with the digital beauty retailer Thirteen Lune.
Today, the brand sells directly to consumers, and Brown said he’s focused on scaling at a manageable pace after seeing many Black-owned brands shut down recently.
Licensed cosmetologist Maya Smith launched The Doux in 2012, based on the needs of her salon’s clients. Smith believes her brand’s major retail success is because of when she entered a market that is tougher now.
“I would like to see more of the support on the financial side, on the infrastructure side, instead of just marketing our genius,” she said. “We have to really start thinking about what we ask for when we’re approached by corporations and entities that want to highlight the brand.”
Credit: Julie Yarbrough
Credit: Julie Yarbrough
Meanwhile, Spelman College is working to create a pipeline for students interested in diversifying skin care, makeup and hair care 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, with applications growing 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 Estée Lauder’s charitable arm. Students attended lectures in the morning then participated in lab work.
“They got really in-depth with how you formulate products across a number of different platforms,” said Leyte Winfield, director of Spelman’s cosmetic science program. “But we also talked about the chemical significance of all of the ingredients.”
Alicia Scott said working with Black chemists has been crucial for Range.
“It’s being able to say, ‘OK, this is how hyperpigmentation shows up on our skin. What ingredients do you recommend to help combat that?’ I want to do something that’s actually going to have efficacy and work on melanin-rich tones.”
Torvikey said Spelman “has the potential to become that gravity” of Atlanta’s developing beauty ecosystem by producing new talent and becoming an industry think tank.
Brown said she’s currently taking meetings and attending events in Los Angeles and New York, but she is optimistic about Glosshood and the future of Atlanta’s beauty scene.
“It’s not fully developed yet,” she said. “But I think there’s lots of space for development to occur.”
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