Melissa Hibbert Joins BrainTrust Founders Studio As President To Support Diverse Beauty Brand Founders

Melissa Hibbert, a longtime marketer and beauty brand consultant, has joined BrainTrust Founders Studio as president to help scale and publicize Black-owned brands at a moment in which they face daunting challenges.

Calling itself the largest membership platform for Black founders of beauty and wellness companies, BrainTrust Founders Studio was formed in 2021 by Kendra Bracken-Ferguson as an outgrowth of BrainTrust, a brand development and social media agency she founded in 2015. It’s focused on education, capital, community and mentorship for Black founders, and its membership currently stands at 211 founders, including 54 Thrones’ Christina Funke Tegbe, Lamik Beauty’s Kim Roxie, Flora & Noor’s Jordan Karim, Beneath Your Mask’s Dana Jackson and Pressed Root’s Piersten Gaines.

“For me, this role is not just about the title. It really is about the work that we are going to be able to do. There isn’t a lot of organizations that are in the trenches the way we are with early-stage founders,” says Hibbert. “An important goal is the amplification of these founders and getting more visibility for them, not just with the consumers, but with people investing in particular brands or categories.”

BrainTrust Founders Studio’s membership base is up from 116 last year and 26 in 2022, and Hibbert envisions increasing it further within beauty and wellness and possibly extending it to fashion and food. Its 2024 members have generated nearly $143 million in sales, up from $100 million last year, and are in almost 47,410 retail doors, up from 23,640 last year. Collectively, 2024 members have sold 39,336 stockkeeping units, reached over 69 million social media followers, created 332 full-time jobs and amassed nearly $115 million in venture capital and angel investment.

BrainTrust Founders Studio has three membership levels: $19 monthly for the founder directory, email newsletters and connection to the community; $66 monthly for service provider, educational and retail information as well as in-person workshops and meet-ups; and $199 monthly for one-on-one coaching, marketing media inclusion and fundraising preparation. Under Hibbert’s stewardship, BrainTrust Founders Studio plans to expand advising, retail and strategic partnerships and experiential programming.

BrainTrust Founders Studio is the pipeline for BrainTrust Fund, a $15 million traditional VC vehicle investing in beauty and wellness companies with at least $1 million in repeatable revenue and one Black-identifying founder. BrainTrust Fund’s portfolio contains Thirteen Lune, CurlMix, Myavana and BeautyStat. Run by Bracken-Ferguson and Lisa Stone, BrainTrust Fund seeks to address a gap in the investment landscape for support for Black founders. Startups with Black founders received 1% and 1.3%, respectively, of VC funding in 2022 and 2021, according to reporting by the publication TechCrunch. Black women founders specifically secured .41% of VC funding in 2021, per nonprofit Digitalundivided’s Project Diane research.

Black-owned beauty brands aren’t garnering the attention from consumers, investors and retailers that they did in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. In addition, the funding ecosystem for founders from minority communities is under threat from conservative groups committed to unraveling diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“This role is not just about the title. It really is about the work that we are going to be able to do.”

VC firm Fearless Fund was sued last year by American Alliance for Equal Rights, a nonprofit helmed by conservative legal activist Edward Blum, whose fight to end affirmative action in college admissions scored a big victory last year when the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, over a grant program for Black women founders. The program has been halted as Fearless Fund contends with the lawsuit.

Arian Simone, founder and CEO of Fearless Fund, told the magazine Inc. in February that her firm is on the ropes as a result of the suit. It’s gone from a team of 19 to a team of six people. “It all fell apart due to litigation,” said Simone. “You’re talking millions of dollars we’ve lost, and it’s truly impacting our operations.” Fearless Fund’s portfolio contains Brown Girl Jane, Bread Beauty, AMP Beauty LA, Femly, Kushae, Live Tinted and Oui The People.

Asked about the DEI backlash, Hibbert says, “It’s discouraging to see it trending in that way. We want to continue to build the confidence and hope in founders, but as they are watching what’s happening in the landscape, quite naturally they are concerned about the implications for the industry, brands and their ability to grow. That’s something that keeps us up at night. We think about, what are the unique ways that we can find nontraditional funders and look at other opportunities for the founders to gain capital? We are being creative about that side of the business.”

In general, creativity is the order of the day. Hibbert, founder Shyft Beauty, a consultancy that’s being integrated into BrainTrust Founders Studio, marketing consultant for Beyoncé’s haircare line Cécred and previously CEO and founder of talent management company The Glam Agency, points out that it’s no longer possible for brands to hitch their rides to prominent influencers to be successful in the beauty market. She counsels brands return to the basics of marketing and distribution.

For example, Hibbert encourages brands to consider distribution in beauty supply stores catering to Black customers. “I’m a huge fan of the beauty supply space,” she says. “At my company Shyft Beauty, we were able to get distribution for a lot of brands through beauty supply. I really feel that that is this forgotten space that is now becoming loved again.”

Hibbert also encourages brands to return to unconventional guerilla marketing tactics often concentrating on their local areas or loyal fans. She says, “The product has to perform, but it’s about those brands that are creating the buzz and doing something unique and memorable that are going to win in this new era of beauty marketing.”