courtesy of AJC
Even women with the drive to begin their own beauty businesses can use a boost.
By 2020, Atlanta-based beauty giant Sephora aims to build an “ecosystem of support” for 50 beauty businesses founded by women.
Women of color entrepreneurs will help set the tone for the social impact program, as part of the inaugural Accelerate class of eight female “fellows” hand-selected by Sephora and announced this week.
The first, Naa-Sakle Akuete, founder and CEO of Eu’Genia Shea, an all natural shea based moisturizing line.
The second, Candace Mitchell, co-founded Atlanta’s Myavana with Chanel Martin.
The third, Lisa Mattam, is the founder and managing principal of an organic skincare line, Sahajan.
Positioning itself as the first hair-care recommendation system, Myavana performs analysis of customer hair strands at the microscopic level and then matches hair needs to hair products on the market. The company evolved from Techturized Inc., founded in June 2012 by four female engineers from Georgia Tech.
Though beauty industry consumers are overwhelmingly women and girls, female-owned beauty businesses are still underrepresented, and Sephora hopes to compensate with the Accelerate program.
Their requirements for this year’s inaugural incubator class were businesses founded by a woman, headquartered in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, or Brazil, and sharing a passion for social good through their work, such as sourcing eco-friendly materials or donating sweat equity to charities.
They also looked for “early stage” businesses not yet distributing their products widely or carried by Sephora.
The fellows will receive an all-expenses paid trip to a boot camp in San Francisco in April, where they’ll work on business models, market analysis, growth plans and funding strategy in preparation for a Demo Day in late August. The fellows also receive a $2,500 grant, mentoring, and possibly additional business funds.
