Digiday
published a report on Essence launching WeLoveUs.shop,
an online marketplace dedicated to Black women-led brands.
The content
is definitely worth reading, as it underscores how everything from Target
to Trump Tariffs have contributed and conspired to accelerate the employment
challenges
impacting US Black women.
Media giant
Essence launches a marketplace for Black women-led brands
By Allison
Smith
The story
was first published by Digiday sibling ModernRetail
When LaToya
Stirrup’s brand Kazmaleje first landed on Target’s shelves in 2022, it felt
like a dream come true. The Miami-based founder had spent years building her
hair-tool brand — which she launched in 2019 — and securing placement at a
national big-box retailer gave her scale and visibility that would’ve been
harder to achieve on her own.
At the time,
Target touted its wholesale partnership with Kazmeleje, along with 20
other Black-owned or founded beauty brands, as part of a broader commitment to
spend more than $2 billion with Black-led businesses by 2025. Target
said the initiative “will help us create more equitable experiences for our
Black guests, and use our company’s size, scale and resources to
create economic opportunity for Black-owned businesses that extends outside of
Target.”
But earlier
this year, Stirrup noticed “a complete sales slowdown” at Target. She
attributed it to consumers who had stopped shopping at the retailer because of
the company’s DEI rollback. After Target announced it
would scale back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion
initiatives in January, calls to stop shopping at the retailer
spread. Modern Retail reported in August that many once-loyal Target
shoppers were still boycotting the retailer because of its DEI rollback.
As a result of
declining sales — Stirrup declined to share exact figures — Target decided to
remove Kazmaleje’s products from its physical stores, she said. Beginning in
2026, she said the brand will be sold online-only at Target, via Target.com.
Target declined to comment.
Stirrup is one
of dozens of Black women founders navigating a particularly challenging moment
for small businesses. Corporate rollbacks of diversity, equity and
inclusion initiatives, including at major retailers like Target,
have created new uncertainty around distribution, visibility and
consumer demand for Black-owned brands. At the same time, President Donald
Trump’s trade war has driven up costs through steep tariffs on top trading
partners, squeezing margins for founders who rely on overseas
manufacturing.
Against that
backdrop, Essence has launched WeLoveUs.shop, a new online marketplace
dedicated to Black women-led brands. The platform, which officially launched
earlier this month, aims to give founders an alternative sales channel at a
moment when the larger retail industry has become more volatile. WeLoveUs.shop
currently features about 100 brands and 1,000 products across categories like
beauty, wellness, fashion and home, with more than 400 additional brands
expressing interest in joining future cohorts, according to Essence.
The idea for
WeLoveUs.shop crystallized earlier this year as the toll on Black women in
business became increasingly clear, Michele Ghee, Essence’s chief content
officer, told Modern Retail. Since February, nearly 600,000 Black women have
been sidelined by job losses and unemployment, according to Fortune. That
reality, combined with rising costs from tariffs and shrinking opportunities
tied to DEI rollbacks, made the launch of WeLoveUs.shop feel urgent. It was
“all hands on deck” to get the marketplace up and running as quickly as
possible, with key executives and stakeholders even working over Thanksgiving.
The site quietly launched in beta just after Thanksgiving, before a wider
public rollout around Cyber Monday.
“We know so
many businesses are hurting right now,” said Ghee. “Nobody is immune to what is
happening in the world today, especially for marginalized communities.”
For Stirrup,
the consumer backlash against Target made it harder for her to promote
Kazmaleje’s products at the retailer. “There was a lot of pushback, especially
on social media, and you couldn’t really talk about being in [Target],” she
said. “That limits you from being able to advertise, because we were getting
the response of, ‘We’re not shopping there.’”
On an earnings
call in May, Target CEO Brian Cornell said the company’s first-quarter
performance was dented by several factors, including “the reaction to the
updates we shared on belonging in January.” He also flagged tariff uncertainty
and declining consumer confidence as other headwinds. He added, “While we
believe each of these factors played a role in our first quarter performance,
we can’t reliably estimate the impact of each one separately.”
The boycott
against Target underscored the risk of relying too heavily on any one channel,
making WeLoveUs.shop an attractive opportunity. “You really have to have a
diverse revenue stream because you never know how the market will impact you,”
she said.
This year has
also been tough for small business owners because of tariffs, which have raised
costs for founders importing materials or finished goods. For Brittny Horne,
founder of RVL Wellness Co., tariffs have significantly constrained growth. RVL
makes therapeutic jigsaw puzzles, and the brand’s products are entirely
manufactured in China, one of the most heavily tariffed countries.
Tariffs
“definitely slowed down our production of new products,” Horne said. “It’s just
one of those things — another issue we have to try to navigate and figure out a
solution.”
Horne said she
explored moving production to the U.S., but quickly ran into cost barriers.
“It’s way more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., especially unless you are
ordering at least 5,000 units per SKU,” she said. With 11 SKUs in her lineup,
she said, “There’s no way we could afford that much at this time.”
The uncertainty
has forced her to rethink where and how RVL can grow. “It just kind of makes
you now have to rethink, ‘OK, well, what do we look forward to next?’” she
said. “‘Where’s a safe space for us to go?’”
That led to
Horne’s decision to join WeLoveUs.shop, which has led to a “really big boost”
in sales since the marketplace launched at the beginning of the month. Even
though it’s only been a couple of weeks since the partnership began, the
majority of RVL’s orders are now coming from WeLoveUs.shop, Horne said.
WeLoveUs.shop
takes a 35% commission per transaction. That’s higher than what other
marketplaces charge. Amazon, for example, takes a cut ranging from 8-15% per
transaction, depending on the product category. But Amazon also charges sellers
for other services, including advertising and fulfillment. In exchange for
WeLoveUs.shop’s 35% commission rate, brands gain access not just to Essence’s
audience but also to its full media ecosystem, including editorial coverage,
social promotion, newsletters and PR support. Other brands that spoke to Modern
Retail for this story said WeLoveUs.shop’s bi-weekly payouts were also more
appealing than the 90- to 120-day payment cycles common in wholesale and
consignment arrangements.
WeLoveUs.shop
is gaining traction on social media, according to Essence’s Ghee, who said
Essence has leaned heavily on its existing audience and distribution muscle to
promote the marketplace. Essence reaches about 75 million touchpoints each
month across its digital platforms, she said, and has been using a mix of
curated gift guides, newsletters and social posts to drive attention to the new
shop. One recent gift guide featuring products priced under $50 generated about
10,000 impressions within the first few days, Ghee said. In another example, a
social post encouraging followers to “tag a Black business” was shared roughly
5,000 times in a similarly short period.
“For [Essence]
to be able to put their media power behind more Black-owned brands at a time of
great need, when small incomes are struggling, can really support them,” said
Sky Canaves, a principal retail analyst at eMarketer.
Melissa
Mitchell, a self-taught designer who sells accessories, apparel and home decor
and more through her brand Abeille Creations, echoed that sentiment. “This year
has been very up and down,” she said. “With this kind of partnership, this
allows me to reach people that I probably would never have on my own.”
