“Society as a whole is so hyperfocused on big business, the unicorns, and we really want to push back on that,” says founder Rahama Wright. “We’re here for small business, we’re here for micro businesses, we’re here for the businesses that might be a hobby. You may have your full-time job, but you love making soap or you love making knickknacks for friends and family, and it brings you an additional, I don’t know, $75,000 a year.”

That additional $75,000 might not mean a lot for the Rhodes of the world, but it’s a significant amount for many entrepreneurs. “The average Black woman-owned business in America makes less than $25,000 a year,” she says, attributing the statistic to J.P. Morgan. “That is the business we care about, and we want to work with because, if we can 5X that number for that business owner, that’s changing her family, that’s changing her block and her community.”

Soft-launched in March and officially opened in September, Yeleen Beauty has drawn more than 20 entrepreneurs from the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia region so far through its partnership with the Washington Area Community Investment Fund. Wright poured just under $2 million into Yeleen Beauty that she received through grants, angel investment and debt.

Entrepreneurs are able to reserve table-top stations that come with tools like a labeler, pH meter, filler and scale for $50 an hour or they can become a member for $250 per month to gain access to events and workshops. The space stores select stock beauty ingredients such as shea butter.

The manufacturing area is at the back of Yeleen Beauty’s facility, and it can produce up to 900 units an hour. Minimum order quantities start at 300 pieces. Yeleen Beauty has a chemist on staff to help with formulations and partners with experts within branding, marketing, sales and distribution that founders can tap for assistance.

“Most places, if you’re not doing 10,000 units or more, it’s very hard to find a place to manufacture,” says Wright. “Even places that are like, we do 5,000 units, they still ideally want larger batches.”

To be considered for participation, founders must be generating annual gross revenue of $25,000 or more, in business for at least two years and committed to a social or environmental issue. Yeleen Beauty specializes in haircare, face, wellness and body, with an emphasis on natural products.

Wright launched body care brand Shea Yeleen in 2005 with the goal of empowering women in West Africa who cultivate the shea nuts behind the shea butter in its products. In a 2021 interview with Beauty Independent, she shared the women supplying her brand can make 2,700%-plus more money than typical of the shea butter trade in Africa.

“You cannot get shea butter without an African woman being impacted by the supply chain,” she said. “I want to change the way people think about this product and the lack of visibility for women producers and encourage them to have a much deeper connection to the continent of Africa and the women there.”

Shea Yeleen’s sales jumped around 60% in 2019, then dipped once the pandemic hit. The brand lost 70% of its revenue after its retail partners closed and Ghana shut its borders for four months. Wright closed the office she’d been leasing for five years and had to furlough staff. To top it off, the contract manufacturer she’d been working with went out of business prior to the lockdown.

“Literally overnight, every part of my business was shutdown,” she says. “In the summer of 2020, I was like, how in the world am I going to get through this moment? And I started thinking about areas of my business that were the most challenging.”

Fundraising and staffing were two of the biggest challenges, but manufacturing stood out as a particularly tricky aspect of business. “The manufacturing industry is really not designed for small business,” says Wright. “So, I started thinking, well, can I create my own manufacturing facility? What would that look like?”

She began investigating shared facilities. She noticed that Washington, D.C. had four commercial kitchens for food businesses, and nothing similar for beauty. Searching beyond Washington, D.C., in the United States and into Europe, she didn’t come across anything like it either.

Wright says, “No one has created this. Why? There’s so many of us who need this.” She adds, “There are so many people who love making and who always dreamed about founding their own beauty brand or doing something with their hands, and they just don’t know how to get started or where to go.”

Although many in the beauty industry believe there’s way too many beauty brands, Wright resists that notion and believes the market can hold a multiplicity of them. “There is room for that unicorn business as well as that indie business,” she says. “That might just be that school teacher who, on her summers, has a break and wants to try something. That’s what we’re here for.”