Target Looks to Back Black-Owned Beauty Brands

Target is looking to tackle a longstanding lag in representation on many retailers' shelves of personal-care and beauty products created by and/or for people of color with a new program to support Black-owned health and beauty brands. 

Through the Building Blocks for Better Products (B3P) program, Minneapolis-based Target is working with 27 Black, indigenous- and people-of-color-owned and founded businesses—brands currently carried by Target (e.g., Rosen Skincare, Girl Hair) as well as smaller startups, Target noted on its Bullseye blog Friday.

A key focus of the program is helping participating businesses in their efforts to make "clean" health and beauty products—those made without undesirable chemicals such as phthalates and parabens—as well as vegan-suitable items. To do that, Target is leveraging its connections with product-development and analysis platforms including Novi Connect and Chem Forward to help B3P-participating businesses evaluate their products and identify a variety of ingredient and formulation options. 

Young King Hair Care CEO Cora Miller, who started her natural hair-care brand for Black and Brown boys after the birth of her son Kade in 2017, had praise for B3P. "This program has been truly instrumental in helping us evaluate both our current product offerings as well as new innovations," Miller said in Target's blog post. Young King's kids curling cream, leave-in conditioner and essential oils are now available at Target.

"Our goal is to support Black-owned businesses and reduce the opportunity gap for women and people of color in business," Target stated, adding that B3P is "just one example of how we’re using our size and scale to support small business and entrepreneurs." Back in April, the retailer committed to spending $2 billion by the end of 2025 with Black-owned businesses. 

Rival Walmart in August announced its exclusive launch of a line of Baby Dove products created specifically for babies with melanin-rich skin. Walmart worked with Baby Dove maker Unilever on developing the products—a collaboration that allowed the partners to "speed to market a solution for diverse families to better meet the needs of our customers," Ralph Clare, a Walmart U.S. VP of consumables, said at the time. 

Market analyst Nielsen noted in April that Black and Latinx consumers have driven sales of personal-care products in the U.S. in the past year. "Hispanic and African American consumers have a track record of far out-spending other ethnic groups when it comes to beauty and personal care, and we can expect multicultural consumers to fuel cosmetics growth," Nielsen stated in an analysis of the category. 

For more on this topic, see "The Color of Personal Care" in WGB's September/October issue.