Ami Colé fills a vacuum in the dark skin beauty products market

Ami Colé fills a vacuum in the dark skin beauty products market

Ami Colé fills a vacuum in the dark skin beauty products market

Special for Infobae of The New York Times.

For years, Diarrha N’diaye-Mbaye mixed and combined bases and correctors to create a tone similar to that of his sumptuous complexion.As much as she experienced, she often left for the disappointed cosmetic counters.

He was not the only one who dealt with this problem.Although brands such as Iman Cosmetics and Fashion Fair have offered products for people with darker skin tones for a long time, options for black and brunette consumers are still very limited.Fenty Beauty by Rihanna convulsed the current market when it was launched in 2017.

In 2018, N’diaye-Mbaye, 32, decided to create the product she had sought with such despair: a light and breathable base that she saw her skin, but better.Last year, in the middle of Pandemia, N’diaye-Mbaye launched Ami Colé, a specific makeup line for skin rich in melanin that bears the name of her mother.

By the end of the year, N'Diaye-Mbaye received the prize for the revelation of the year from Women's Wear Daily, the Disrupting of the Year award by the Glossy Fashion and Beauty Magazine and the Innovative Prize in the Innovative in theCosmetic industry by Refinery29.The Rímel of her brand was named one of "The favorite products of the beauty editor" of Allure.

"After making an introspection, I realized that the less makeup I used, the safer I felt," said N'Diaye-Mbaye in an interview in his mother's braiding hall, in Harlem, in the city of NuevaYork"Seeing you in the mirror and being able to feel that security ... she knew that we all needed that and knew it didn't exist."

N’diaye-Mbaye felt that he understood the importance of offering products for black women, since he grew seeing the effects of such care.

Ami Colé llena un vacío en el mercado de productos de belleza para piel oscura

As a child in Little Senegal, an Enclave of Western Africa immigrants in Harlem, N’diaye-Mbaye passed most of his afternoons in Aminata Hair Braiding, a beauty salon that his mother opened in 1989.

"Since I have a great time I had it here," said N’diaye-Mbaye, pointing to the hair braided hall that gradually filled with customers.

He used to finish his task sitting near a window, next to a sink, often with a white blouse, a navy blue dress and opaque white stockings: his school uniform.A small radio, tuned to the Hot 97 station, was company N’diaye-Mbaye.Photographs of women with different braided styles - African Trenzes, cash braids, boxer braids, microtenzas - adorned the walls.

I saw black women to get out of the room a little more healthy, if not that armed with a self -esteem shield and several bags of braided kanekalon extensions in their hair.N’diaye-Mbaye wanted to replicate that experience for those who were not satisfied with the products offered by cosmetics companies.

In 2011, after graduating from the degree of English Letters at the University of Syracuse, he returned to live in Harlem.After several internships and a work in Tempu, a company that manufactures makeup that applies with airbrush, she found a job as director of social networks strategies in the Paris Oréal in 2016.

"As you can imagine, everything was very monolithic, as for how they thought about beauty," said N’diaye-Mbaye.

In 2018, N’Diaye-Mbaye was recruited by Emily Weiss, founder of the Glossier Cosmetics Company, to work with the product development team.Weiss was interested in the community approach of N’diaye-Mbaye and invested to help her develop her ideas.

"I remember that I thought:" Let's see if you are interested in developing a product, "said Weiss in an email.

Glossier served as a kind of incubator for Ami Colé, since the company develops its products based on customer needs, which discovers through consumer analysis.

In 2019, N’diaye-Mbaye resigned from his work in Glossier and began to devote himself fully to the creation of Ami Colé.He attended the Cosmoprof Convention, a commercial fair that brings together producers, distributors and manufacturers of the cosmetic industry.There, she looked for suppliers that could create the formula she hoped to make a reality, based on surveys to more than 400 women.Most suppliers were not interested.

"Some people told me:‘ Our next appointment is with Fenty, we are not going to waste time with this, "said N’diaye-Mbaye.

After a while, he managed to connect with a cosmetic formulator based in Italy and, eight months later, finally received the first samples, which he used in his search for financing.Then, in 2020, the pandemic stopped his plans.

"I thought:" Nobody is going to give me money now because the world is obviously in pause, "he said."Not know what to do".

Months later, when George Floyd was killed in May 2020 and protests were unleashed throughout the country, N’diaye-Mbaye realized that investors were also motivated to action.

"Suddenly, people answered my emails," said N’diaye-Mbaye."People who had rejected me in 2019 now contact me."

I was ready for calls.In the end, he raised 1.69 million dollars in financing in investor sponsors.The majority of institutional capital came from Imaginary Ventures and Debut Capital, a fund that works specifically with black, Latin and indigenous founders.

At present, Ami Colé offers a light and breathable base, an illuminator, designed to provide a touch of brightness, and a lip oil.Product prices vary from 19 to 32 dollars.

"All I needed was access," said N’diaye-Mbaye."I've been looking for that access for years and people never gave it to me or made me feel that I was crazy to believe I had more to offer."

N’diaye-Mbaye still does not believe all the success he has had.And he is learning to make decisions on the march.

"I feel very overwhelmed," he admitted, while his mother looked at her in the living room, with her hair wrapped in a black silk handkerchief."For so long what I wanted most is that this happened," she added nostalgia."It seems to me crazy that I mention in the same phrase as Rihanna or Fenty!"

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