Tracee Ellis Ross has weighed in on why beauty brands are failing.

Many Black founders have noted that the industry has shifted and no longer offers the level of institutional support seen in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. While the social reckoning of that moment pushed many to open their wallets, creating opportunities for Black-led brands, it has since become a stark reminder that some of those commitments were never built to last. This reality has only heightened under the Trump administration, which sees the upholding of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a threat.

This sentiment was echoed by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, the founder of clean- beauty brand Ami Colé. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Ami Colé was launched in 2021 and targeted individuals with deeper skin tones. N’Diaye-Mbaye received over $3 million in investor support from G9 Ventures and Greycroft, as well as angel investors including Hannah Bronfman and The Cut Editor-in-Chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner.

However, in 2025, she sent shockwaves throughout the beauty industry, when she announced the brand, which was available across North American Sephora stores, was shutting down. She acknowledged the shifting attitudes among investors and also cited tariffs as reasons that influenced her decision.

“Instead of focusing on the healthy, sustainable future of the company and meeting the needs of our loyal fan base, I rode a temperamental wave of appraising investors — some of whom seemed to have an attitude toward equity and ‘betting big on inclusivity’ that changed its tune a lot, to my ears, from what it sounded like in 2020,” N’Diaye-Mbaye said in an op-ed penned in The Cut.

“Almost six years after Ami Colé first lived in my head — and four years after we officially launched — the world feels upside down,” she continued. “We’ve got this president, climbing tariffs, and marketing costs that are brutal for small brands like mine. And while my story isn’t unique, it still hurts to watch an industry preach inclusivity while remaining so unforgiving.”

Ami Colé joins a slew of other Black-owned beauty brands that have shut down following Trump’s appointment to office. This includes Beauty Bakerie, Ceylon, and Koils by Nature, according to Fast Company.

Ross, who is the founder of Pattern Beauty, a company she launched by onboarding business partners and opting against self-funding, shared her thoughts on the matter during the “Aspire with Emma Grede” podcast. In conversation with Grede, Ross dove into the factors and considerations around the dissolving of these Black-owned beauty brands.

She admitted it is very hard to maintain a brand and the market is oversaturated, while acknowledging the industry has to put in the effort to support these brands.

“I think we have to do better as an industry. I think there are systemic roadblocks, and I think it requires a broader approach to support in understanding how you take a unique value proposition and how you scale that, what that would look like,” Ross explained. “There’s some creativity in making sense of that with a brand. If we’re starting with this broad spectrum, right, where is the growth? Is the growth from expanded retail partners? Is the growth from other products? If so, what are the other products that maintain your initial value proposition?”

She later added, “The other piece of it, which is something I talk about not just in the beauty space but in Hollywood and everywhere, is there is a cultural currency that is not accounted for in dollar numbers that we must, as an industry, do a better job of counting. For example, a very exclusive brand that serves a specific customer might not bring in the same dollar amount, but it is bringing a new customer into your store that is accounting for an overflow, a halo effect in your business, that is either just serving you culturally or serving you financially in a larger way that you’re not accounting to that brand. People need to have a better sense of that and really support that in a different way.”