Today we’d like to introduce you to Temilola Adedipe.
Hi Temilola, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
The idea for ÀWA Marketplace started with a simple product discovery back in 2016. My 18-year-old self fell in love with Bahi Cosmetics, now known as Ayele and Co., and their heavenly Sunflower Sweets Serum. At the time, I was preparing to go to college, and my skin was a big insecurity of mine. I had acne-prone skin that would worsen because of stress, and it took a big hit on my self-confidence. I found myself shrinking when I deserved to take up space, all because of my acne. I began to investigate ways to reduce stress and clear my skin which led me into holistic wellness, gut-health — how that all plays into your skin and overall health. I started researching skincare companies that number one, were Black-owned & catered to melanin-rich skin because ya girl’s got tons of melanin, and number two, were plant-based because I had read too many scientific articles that discussed how many popular cosmetic and personal care brands silently harbored toxic ingredients in their products. This was enough to kickstart my holistic health journey, ultimately being the reason why I decided to major in Biomedical engineering, to study how plants and plant-derived materials impact our cellular healing.
Discovering Ayele and Co. introduced me to a world that centered me and my melanin-rich skin. I introduced the Sunflower Sweets Serum to my family and friends (to great reception), and I watched as my close friends began their own holistic health journeys which I found absolutely delightful. What really had an impact on me was the fact that each and every dollar from those sales were given back to the Black, African diaspora, & Pan-African communities. Knowing that Black women and men pour their hearts into providing our community with products made for us that are non-toxic and sustainable, catapulted me into wanting to amplify their voices even more. Thus, ÀWA Marketplace was born. ÀWA stands for “Us” in my native language, Yoruba, but to me, it means more than us. It means our collective, our tribe, our community of people that are passionate about intentional living and protecting their melanin-rich magnificence. I decided to create a melanin-centered marketplace for people that are looking for a platform that offers plant-based, ethically made, personal care, beauty, and wellness items that are made by Black-owned brands. I sought to create a platform that allowed us to pour back into our communities while supporting brands that make it their mission to support our holistic health journeys.
We first launched in April 2021 but had difficulty finding a marketplace platform that could deliver the kind of shopping experience I knew our community deserved. Although we had 6 phenomenal vendors at the time, there were consistent issues and I knew that in order to give our community an unforgettable experience that encouraged people to embark on their holistic wellness journey, we had to invest in a platform that could deliver just that. In March 2022, we partnered with Liane Agbi, founder of Beautifuli Digital and web developer extraordinaire, to help us build such a platform and I’m proud to say that we will be launching in December 2022! We received our trademark earlier this year and we had our very first brand photoshoot by a phenomenal Dallas photographer, Jasmine Ryland. It was exhilarating seeing months of hard work come together to create a vision that goes past these photos and into the vision we have for how we boldly choose to take up space in this industry.
We’ve included some amazing feature sets onto the platform such as an affiliate program, meant to highlight Black creators that make it their mission to introduce clean products to their communities, and blogs meant to guide our community as they embark on this journey. We also recently partnered with a cosmetic chemist, Éliane Treadwell, founder of Relevant Laboratories. She has been instrumental in testing products and ensuring that our vendors’ product ingredients are certifiable, non-toxic and that they are able to deliver on their product claims. With this partnership, we have been able to give Black-owned businesses a holistic review, so they are confident in what they offer our communities.
We are super excited to show you all what we have in store, and we can’t wait to give our ÀWA Tribe the attention their holistic wellness journey deserves.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I wish that I could say that it has been nothing but smooth sailing but like many other first-time business owners can attest to, it is often not a smooth ride. I started ÀWA Marketplace in the middle of the pandemic with a dream and enough funds to apply for an LLC. I had recently graduated from university, and I knew that I was as ready as I would ever be. I shared the idea with my closest family and friends and received an unwavering amount of support which was the positive reinforcement I needed, especially during our building stage.
I think our biggest struggle, aside from funding, has been executing ÀWA Marketplace in a way that best serves our customer base with our resource constraints in mind. During the day, I work as a Product Manager, so I’m used to quickly weighing the pros and cons of adding certain features and capabilities to products and being able to make swift yet well-informed decisions. But when it came to ÀWA, everything felt so personal. It felt like leaving out a certain feature set was me doing a disservice to the people I so badly wanted to serve. Meanwhile, I found that including certain features or programs meant going over budget or having to make tough tradeoffs regarding our time, resources, and even other features/programs. Needless to say, there have been a lot of difficult decisions along the way. One of the things that is an exponential help to my team and I is putting ideas on a backlog that we revisit every 3 months (which is why we are so big on getting feedback from our community)
As a first-time business owner, I did tons of research and felt like I was well-informed before embarking on this journey, but there are always things you don’t learn about until you’re out there just doing it. There was a myriad of things I learned on the fly when it came to business maintenance, legal obligations, and financial accounting. I’m sure there are things that I still don’t know, and one thing I had to become comfortable with was not always knowing the answer but dedicating myself to being a life-long learner who could learn on the go to make smart strategic decisions.
Although there are obstacles and challenges, I can tell that our community is excited for this new paradigm shift towards holistic, melanin-centered personal care and wellness. I’ve received feedback from people in these spaces and both our current customers, future customers, vendors, and affiliates are excited for the space and platform we are building. We feel this excitement and it’s really pushing us to roll out some exciting updates coming soon!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
ÀWA Marketplace is a melanin-centered platform featuring a careful curation of plant-based & sustainable, personal care, beauty, and wellness items created by Black-owned brands. We offer a robust platform that emphasizes holistic wellness in the Black, African diaspora & Pan-African communities, and it is our mission to amplify the voices and the reach of Black-owned businesses that make it their mission to promote holistic health and wellness in the Black, African diaspora, & Pan-African communities. We have a variety of resources to help those that are interested in investing in their holistic health such as blogs and community discussions.
The greatest thing about partnering with ÀWA Marketplace is that brands, creators, and customers know they are joining a platform that was created to celebrate them, their mission, and their holistic wellness journey. We pride ourselves on the fact that we require transparency from our partnering brands and that you can guarantee we will never sell something on our platform that goes against our Scratch It List (AKA our list of chemicals and ingredients that are scientifically proven to be toxic to our body and health). We provide an opportunity for businesses to join a community of other Black-owned businesses that are dedicated to growing an authentic audience while scaling their brands. Not only have we created a space for Black-owned businesses to receive a holistic review as they are preparing to scale their brands, we have also provided brands with a customer base that is looking for this kind of authenticity and is extremely loyal to holistically improving their state of wellness.
We offer an exclusive affiliate program that centers Black creators that promote plant-powered products & holistic wellness. As an ÀWA affiliate, you get the chance to earn a percentage of every transaction made when a customer uses your affiliate link. We created this program to support the myriad of talented Black creators in the creator market. We are committed to driving forward economic growth in the Black community by creating multiple avenues for Black creators and entrepreneurs to sell and earn on our platform.
By using sustainable products and supporting brands dedicated to this mission, we are making strides in helping to reduce our carbon footprint and put more clean products in the hands of a community that is often left to choose less quality personal care and beauty essentials because of their socioeconomic standings, geographical locations, and other deterrents.
There’s no sugarcoating the fact that most products are made for the majority and don’t often factor in the richness and uniqueness of Black skin. From deep textures to hyperpigmentation-prone sensitive skin, Black consumers are their own set of diversity and deserve access to products that have been crafted with their concerns in mind. At ÀWA Marketplace we put the Black consumer first so that they can have access to the best clean skincare and personal care products on the market that are carefully designed with their melanin in mind. We know that you are worth more than a shelf or an ethnic aisle in your local grocery store and thus we are committed to making sure that your shopping experience celebrates you each and every day.
What do you think about happiness?
This question used to make me a little nervous because I always felt like I could never come up with an adequate enough answer. I am what many would consider multi hyphenate, so there are a lot of things that make me happy such as working on thigs I am passionate about, my family, traveling and enjoying new adventures, the feeling of community and fellowship, working out and eating good food. But when I think about what truly brings me joy, it would have to be the act of creating balance. Maybe it’s the Libra in me speaking or God made me this way, but for me, it is knowing that we have the opportunity to create balance in our lives, our bodies, and the world we live in. I grew up in Akure, Nigeria before moving to America and one of the things that baffled me was how unbalanced life in the States can be. We have a ridiculous amount of vacant homes yet such a large homeless population. We have kids that need lunch money in order to be able to eat during 8-hour school days, yet we waste enough food to feed an entire country. I once had dreams of being a pediatrician when I was a little girl (which could be because I was a young Nigerian girl and the only acceptable choices I had were doctor, lawyer, and engineer) but my reasoning at that time was because I would see so many Black and brown children suffer due to systemic racism and I wanted to bring balance back to the world. Now that’s a difficult task for one person to undertake, but what I found was that my joy came from creating balance both for myself and for others. For me that may look like eating a plant-rich meal, taking a walk after a long day to marvel at the sunset or helping my parents build urgent care centers in Nigeria, all of those things adding balance in their own way. When I get to bring an idea to life that tips the scale towards good, whether in my life or others, my cup overflows.
Pricing:
- Free Package: Brands on our free package can upload 1 product. This is great for brands interested in exploring the platform or just getting started.
- Enhanced Package: $9.99 every two months. Brands can upload up to 10 products and have up to 2 staff members to help manage their store.
- Professional Package: $29.99 every two months. Brands can upload up to 50 products and have up to 5 staff members to help manage their store.
- Enterprise Package: $49.99 every two months. Brands can upload up to 100 products and have up to 10 staff members to help manage their store.
Contact Info:
- Website: awarawa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/awamarketplace/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Shop.Awamarketplace/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AWAMarketplace
Image Credits
Jasmine Ryland
Temitope Adedipe
Brittani Gardner
Bionka Barryer
Amari Lewis
De’drian Windham
Charity Njeru
Iyanu Lawal
Ruth Aminu
