Media giant Essence launches a marketplace for Black women-led brands
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.”