Displaying items by tag: Women Entrepreneurs

Chaymeriyia Moncrief is a tech entrepreneur from Alabama who is the founder and CEO of prepaid wireless carrier, Tesix Wireless™ Network. She turned down a $4.4M takeover offer, raised over $5M, and ended the 2019 year with a $10M valuation. Now, she is taking on an even bigger technology sector: smartphones and electronics.

While many businesses are allowed to reopen in Georgia, some black small business owners are struggling with the decision, especially since black Americans appear to be at higher risk when it comes to Covid-19.

RPGSHOW, a leading provider of luxury wigs in partnership with sister company, MyFirstWig, is giving back to the community with a donation of vital PPE materials to various hospitals in NYC and other areas currently battling COVID-19.

When Detroit resident Gwen Jimmere started her hair company, she only had $32 in her banking account and was just laid off from her full time, corporate job all while going through a divorce. She would run her small business from her basement while taking care of her infant son.

Launched in 2013, Jimmere created Naturalicious by making products in her kitchen and selling them from her home. The brand now serves over 700,000 customers worldwide with great reviews. She is the first African American woman to hold a patent for a natural haircare product.

Today, Jimmere is celebrating the seventh anniversary of her company with a new 4,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Detroit. The new office will be home to 13 full-time employees including those from Services to Enhance Potential (STEP), a nonprofit that connects businesses with people with special needs looking for employment. The new location is equipped to meet increasing orders due to customer demand.

In addition to the new manufacturing facility, Jimmere is also gearing up to open her first flagship Naturalicious salon. Naturalicious Certified Stylists will be there to provide excellent service while educating customers on how to care for their hair texture and what product ingredients to use in a relaxing setting. Her goal is to expand to more brick-and-mortar locations to spread the brand’s message.

Source https://www.blackenterprise.com/detroit-entrepreneur-opens-4000-sq-ft-manufacturing-facility-for-her-haircare-company/

These days, being able to work from home is an asset. With the current global events, it is crucial that individuals and businesses adopt alternative and innovative ways to provide services, reach their clients, spread their messages, learn and earn income. For this reason, licensed social worker and entrepreneur Jessyca Marshall has launched

Jay-Z has clearly been busy. Not only did he join the billionaire’s club, but the venture capital (VC) fund he co-founded recently led the round for allergy-friendly food startup, Partake Foods.

Partake Foods is a black-owned company that makes health-conscious food products. They recently closed a $1 million dollar round of seed funding.

Meet Lesley Riley, CEO of Mama Biscuit®, the family-friendly, all-natural, gluten-free gourmet baking company. What started as a loving tribute to her grandma’s 127-year old family recipe for mouth-watering southern biscuits to comfortable cobblers has now become a popular must-have with over 60 scrumptious products and 32 items in rotation.

Almost 100 years after Madam C.J. Walker built a 34-room mansion in New York, beauty business guru Richelieu Dennis plans to turn the legendary beauty pioneer’s estate into an incubator for black women in business. Talk about coming full circle!

Dennis, the founder of Shea Moisture who started his nearly $1 billion business empire by selling soap in Harlem in the ’90s, helped facilitate the acquisition of the Villa Lewaro estate. The New Voices Foundation, an organization that Dennis founded to empower women of color entrepreneurs, will spearhead the stabilization of the structure and planning for future use, according to a press release.

The surge of black-women owned businesses helped the U.S. Small Business Administration post-double-digit dollar gains this year in loan approvals for those firms.

The SBA’s 7(a) Loan Program, the agency’s primary and most common lending program, approved 696 loans for just over $166.7 million for African American women businesses, up 3% in the number of loans and a 20% jump in dollar amount in the fiscal year 2018 from 2017.

Unable to find a job after graduating from Spelman College was discouraging for Danielle P. Jeter, especially because she had done everything right. Not only was she accepted into the prestigious HBCU, but she also became a standout student and excelled during her academic career. “I had a whole résumé of experience. I studied abroad. I interned every summer. I got jobs.