How A Seasoned Black Entrepreneur Is Helping Launch Black-Owned Business In the Lucrative Beauty Space

A seasoned entrepreneur, Germaine Bolds-Leftridge has become a strong accomplice to diverse business owners in the hair and beauty market.

According to Forbes, she runs GBL Sales, a Maryland-based firm that offers sales and marketing services to niche ethnic beauty brands. She is helping those businesses trying hard to gain business from larger companies that are perhaps competitors.

Bolds-Leftridge has backed Black-owned brands that include Curls Dynasty, Oyin Handmade, and Mielle Organics, according to Forbes and Black Enterprise research.

She works with such diverse brands in several ways. For instance, she helps them build strategies to better sell their products to potential buyers and sellers, offers benefits of working with such brands, and applies actions to help urge retailers to agree to buy from the brands.

Her efforts are needed as larger mainstream companies with deeper pockets and resources in recent years continue to try to grab a larger share of haircare and other products that are perhaps attractive to consumers of color. It’s not surprising that consumers goods giants like Unilever and Procter & Gamble want to boost market share—and potentially profits—given the spending power market segments like Black consumers have. For instance, Nielsen research shows that African Americans shelled out $54 million of the total $63 million spent in the ethnic and beauty market in 2017.

Further, a significant amount of Black dollars were disbursed in the overall beauty marketplace in 2017. All told, Blacks spent  $473 million in total haircare out of $4.2 billion industry-wide. They too made major investments in personal appearance products, like grooming aids, spending $127 million out of $889 million. And in the skincare preparations category, they account for $465 million out of $3 billion.

“When I started GBL Sales, I wanted to become a major player in the beauty space,” Bolds-Leftridge told Forbes. “However, to make a difference, I had to create a new business model which built more creative and authentic brands. The main goal was to make small brands into household names. I knew if I could help smaller brands to grow that the larger brands would soon know my name.”