Orion Brown’s Journey with BlackTravelBox: Celebrating Women of Color Business Owners

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women in Motion, we have Orion Brown with BlackTravelBox. Welcome.

Orion Brown: Hey, thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to get caught up with you. For folks who aren’t familiar, can you tell us a little bit about BlackTravelBox?

Orion Brown: Yes. So BlackTravelBox is really at the apex of beauty and travel. So, we’re a hair and skincare brand, really a lifestyle brand focused on travelers of color. So, everything that we make is in forms and formats that travels well, gets through TSA and it’s actually inclusive. So, our hair and skin care products actually work for a wide variety of hair textures and skin tones.

Lee Kantor: And what’s the back story? How’d you get involved?

Orion Brown: Oh my gosh. Well, I’m a career brand strategist. I spent a lot of time in corporate America, took all of my vacation days, and I just found that every time I was traveling and every time I was on vacation, I had this singular frustration with not having access to products that really worked for my hair. I had quite a bit more hair back in my 30s, curls and everything, just so much volume. And it was a lot to really contend with bringing my own products, rewrapping things, repackaging things, running around town, trying to find a store that I could potentially find something that would work for me in. And it just took away from the beauty of being able to be on vacation and be away from sort of corporate life and be able to unwind. And so, I was on a trip to Japan, and it just really hit it home for me that there really needs to be something on the market for women of color who travel.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you launch this while you were working in corporate, or did you say, “I’m going to pull the ripcord and I’m going all in here”?

Orion Brown: Well, you know, when I started BlackTravelBox, I actually wasn’t even really thinking, “Oh, I’m going to become an entrepreneur now.” I thought- I spent quite a bit of time in food and beverage and had run pretty big brands, pretty well-known brands, and I was like, “This would just be a really cool passion project to work on and create something interesting.” So, I was working full time and continued to work full time for a while and got the feedback, particularly from early-stage investors that, you know, “We need to see that you’re all in. So, you need to be full time on it.” And so, I did take some time and do that. But you know, not all advice is good advice. So I have gone back throughout my time with working on BlackTravelBox to supplement and really to fund much of the work that we’ve done here.

Lee Kantor: So, the first move was to get investors. It wasn’t to, like, create a minimum viable product or something along those lines?

Orion Brown: No. Yeah, the first move was to do the consumer research. So, I spent about a year just looking at and understanding the consumer. And, arguably, I think a lot of time people make the mistake of believing that because they sort of resonate with the idea that they are complete and total in terms of the ideal consumer. And that’s not really true. So, I spent quite a bit of time doing consumer insights and research, surveying, doing interviews, all kinds of things, as well as going out into the marketplace to see what competitive products were out there. Because even if I hadn’t heard of it, it might already exist. And so, I went to things like Expo West and those types of places to better understand what was going on within the beauty industry as a whole, so that I could really anchor in what was the unique value proposition of this potential brand and product, as well as, like, what were the competitive set and what were really the pain points that customers like me or consumers like me had beyond the ones that were obvious.

Lee Kantor: So, you spent a lot of time kind of understanding the consumer before even putting together what the service or product was going to be?

Orion Brown: Correct, correct. And so, it really was doing that initial, my poor friends, I interviewed the crap out of my friends. Every time someone would come in town, I’d be like, “Oh, this is great, let’s have lunch. What’s in your luggage?” And just really started talking to people and then, of course, scaled that up. So, doing surveys and doing quantitative studies and that kind of thing. So really understanding.

Orion Brown: And I took a very corporate approach to it. I’m sure this isn’t like the scrappy, just sell it out of your car kind of approach. But I really took the approach of doing the due diligence to understand the consumer side and then building out both. The brand was one sort of lane of build, and then the other lane was product, right. So, what is this brand? What should it be? What should it mean to you? How does it show up in the world? And how can it be different and really differentiated? And then, from a product perspective, what can we develop that will actually meet and exceed expectations on these particular pain points?

Lee Kantor: And then what was kind of 1.0? What was the first product or service you landed on?

Orion Brown: So, the first product was our body balm. And it was an amalgam of a lot of conversations where men and women alike were like, “You know what? The products that are in hotels are just so watery,” which nobody really likes them. But the challenge is, is that they have a filler in them. And that filler is a white powder when it’s not mixed with water. The first ingredient in those lotions that you get at a hotel is going to be water. The next ingredient is some form of filler. So, what happens is, is it goes on brown skin, the water evaporates, and it leaves the white film behind. And it’s just you look dustier than you did when you were trying to get rid of the dryness.

Orion Brown: And so for me, it was about, well, how do we create a product that’s rich, emollient, and kind of does the job that we need in terms of efficacy? And then, let’s back that out and understand how do we get this thing to travel well, to be convenient, to last long? And then, how do we also then get around the headaches of TSA? And that’s where I landed on a formulation that is very, very stable. Semisolid, I would say. It’s a whipped body balm. And it’s something that our customers really, really love. I actually- it’s arguably 1.0, but it hasn’t changed since we started, and it’s been doing pretty well.

Lee Kantor: So, what was it like when you had- like, this is kind of one of those moment-of-truth times, right, where you’re like, “Okay, we’ve thought about it. We’ve talked all these people. We have a product that these people should buy,” and then you put it out there. Were you getting traction right away? Like, what was that like when you put it out to the market and just got that real data, not your friends, just real people that are going to spend money?

Orion Brown: Yeah, totally. So, the funny thing is I spent quite a bit of time after I got to the MVP doing some consumer research with the actual physical product. So, sending product out, particularly to influencers. And this is influencers like lowercase I, not uppercase I. I’m not talking about big celebrities, but folks who are in both the travel and beauty space. And the reason why is because I wanted to find super users, people who have the use case more often than most people, people who have to pack products, use products while they travel more often than most people. And so, that was the initial sort of get in front of people and get their reactions. And we got a lot of great feedback and a lot of great support from that.

Orion Brown: Once it was time to actually launch this into market, there was sort of a twofold thing. So, the first challenge was is I totally came into this, I would say arguably very naive thinking, “Entrepreneurship, it’s a meritocracy. If you show up, if you have the experience and the chops, people will come, they will invest in you and you’ll get the support you need.” That just wasn’t the case. And that first year that I went out kind of focused as a full-time job as of sorts in trying to get that funding, that initial pre-seed funding for the business, it was just like, that’s the best- that’s the technical term I’d have to give for it. So, I said, “You know what? That’s okay.” And this was going into 2020 now. So, you know how we do. We do our vision board in January. We’re like, “Okay, 2020 vision. I got this. This is going to be great. I’m going to do it organically. I’m going to bootstrap it.” And my launch date was pegged at April 1st, 2020.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it was probably something on that vision board that showed up that wasn’t on the vision board.

Orion Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The world caught a cold, to say the least. And the brand and business that was all about out-of-home use, no one could leave their homes. So, it was a little bit of an anticlimactic thing. I still launched. I took about a month to just decide whether or not I was insane for even trying to move forward. But I did decide, “You know what? Here’s the thing. If I move forward, it’s so new that the unique value proposition, we can’t pivot for COVID and then pivot back.” I don’t see a way to do that. And so, I said, “You know what? I’m just going to keep this really anchored in travel and travel as the esthetic and sort of the brainchild for the entire brand. And we’re going to continue to celebrate that, but we’re going to focus on cultivating community.”

Orion Brown: And so, through that time, it was twofold. One, it was getting product into people’s hands via promotional things. So, we did a hospital or frontline workers bundle, which was our hand cream, as well as our lip balm. And being able to- you could purchase one and then donate one to a frontline worker. People wanted to be able to support frontline workers. And particularly within the black community, we found that like a lot of major hospitals and health clinics that were just overrun, just disproportionately hit by COVID. And so, it was a way to, one, give back to the wellness of my community. But two, also get people engaged and involved and understand the product without getting in like a weird space of, “Hey, you should be traveling. Hey, you should be doing this,” because I didn’t feel like that would be the right way to go.

Orion Brown: And so, that was a really wonderful way to introduce people to the brand. They understood what we stood for. They understood why we weren’t like on scene in Tahiti, like shooting stuff. And it built up our initial customer base. So, we were able to get to 10,000-12,000 followers on our social in that period of time and really start to build a buzz that landed us in a number of publications, eventually on Beyonce’s website and a number of other places.

Lee Kantor: Now, that’s a great lesson for entrepreneurs in terms of investing time and energy and resources on building community. Do you have any advice for an entrepreneur that wants to build community but may not know where to begin?

Orion Brown: Yeah. I mean, I would say the biggest thing is, is begin with the thing that’s probably most uncomfortable. I’m going to be super transparent. I don’t love to be on camera. I don’t love to be on live. I’m a little bit- I’m just old enough to not be intrigued by the internet as much, but young enough to still understand that it’s important in how it works. And so, for me, one thing that was really breakthrough was started doing Wind Down Wednesdays. And the reason why it’s a Wind Down Wednesday – again, obviously this is like I didn’t invent this. It was as a thing that was out there. But I was like, I get to have a glass of wine, so my nerves aren’t shot, and I can go live and talk with people and talk about the thing that I’m excited about without kind of freaking out and being a total klutz about it.

Orion Brown: So, the advice is, is really kind of do the hard thing. In terms of building community, especially as a small business owner or as a brand, an entrepreneur that has a brand that’s really structured around you or structured around identity, being able to see you and see who you are is so, so critical. And I think it’s also- particularly so if you don’t have funding. When you have funding, you can have no name or no face brands, right? You can have tons and tons of ad spend and acquire customers at scale really quickly. When you don’t really have that funding, the key is then to draw people in with realness. And that’s where you’re going to get highly engaged smaller communities that are really, really loyal because they get to know you as a person.

Lee Kantor: And that’s an interesting lesson for everyone to hear, but also from you coming from kind of a corporate background, where their first move usually is throw money at it.

Orion Brown: Yes.

Lee Kantor: But as an entrepreneur, with limited resources, you have to do what you got to do. So then, you had to do kind of ground up. So, it’s interesting for you to have gone through that and shared the story because you get to see both sides of that. You’ve seen what it looks like throwing money at it. And now, you’ve seen what it looks like kind of earning your way up the ladder like that.

Orion Brown: Definitely, definitely. And it’s- you know, we’re still earning our way up, but that’s the value of the connections. At one point, I had actually stopped doing wind downs. I had done maybe 80 or 90 of them in a row. Just every wee,k I was interviewing new people. We just brought it back, but I had gotten a little bit burnt out with doing it and stepped away and came back and people were like, “We missed you. We missed this.” Like people were looking for it a year and a half later, which was pretty impressive considering the internet really gives us the attention span of a flea, if at best. So, knowing that we’ve created these really deep connections with people that I can even kind of go away and come back, and they’re still there, and they’re still hungry for that connection, because we resonated on a really authentic level, it’s just priceless.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Well, that’s one of the markers of you have a brand that matters is people miss you when you’re gone.

Orion Brown: Yes, I guess that is true.

Lee Kantor: Now, can we talk a little bit about this Ifundwomen. I’m not familiar with it. I’d love to learn more. Your role in this and what it is.

Orion Brown: Sure. So, IFundWomen is a rewards-based crowdfunding platform and a community actually. A very large community, of tens of thousands of women who are entrepreneurs and who are looking to fund their businesses. So, I came into the IFundWomen community initially a couple of years ago through a grant that they had in partnership with Caress, the brand Caress. And so, with the Caress brand grant program, I was introduced to the platform. I had heard of it a little bit. And many of us have heard of like, sort of, the Kickstarters and stuff of the world. It’s that idea. It’s non-equity based. You’re essentially selling a product, service, experience, whatever it might be in service of funding your business.

Orion Brown: And so, what I was really looking for was taking the business to the next level because we had some opportunities, potential opportunities coming up in retail and other places. I had done a number of accelerators, and I really wanted to raise $50,000, so that I could get warehouse space and get out of my house and, like, execute this in a more structured way. And so, yeah, IFundWomen was great. I got amazing coaching. I think we went through about 6 or 8 weeks of coaching and classes that actually took us through the IFundWomen method, which is their way of essentially soup to nuts planning a campaign and executing it.

Orion Brown: And so, we hit and surpassed that $50,000 target. I think we came in at right around 67K as we were closing that round. And even after that, I had done tons and tons of like grants and things like that that I was like applying for. Some hit, some missed. And so, I actually opened it back up about a year and a half later or a year later, and raised an additional, gosh, we got up to 80, I think, in total. So, we had- it was just such a great experience, and I was able- the process is repeatable, it’s reliable, and it really puts, I think, the entrepreneur in the driver’s seat of their own destiny in terms of funding. And so, I joined IFundWomen recently on the back end of the business as a senior coach. And so, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with them, helping them to help entrepreneurs like me, and kind of bring in that experience of having gone through the programing to build even better programing.

Lee Kantor: Wow, that sounds wonderful. Is this a nationwide organization or global?

Orion Brown: It’s actually global. So I have literally coached people random times in Norway because it’s as long as you can make a time, all of the programing is digitally delivered. So, it gives you the opportunity to really- whether you’re reviewing things asynchronously, like watching videos of workshops and things of that nature or getting one-on-one coaching, it’s all done remotely. So, it’s very, very much global.

Lee Kantor: And can you tell us- we use the word community multiple times here. I’d like to ask you a question about why you decided to become part of the WBEC-West community.

Orion Brown: Oh, yes, definitely. It’s funny because when I first started out, I was like, “What can I do to get this business in front of as many people as possible?” And one of the first things that comes up is when I walk in a room, people notice that I’m black and I’m a woman. And so, understanding that there are a lot of platforms in different places out there that do certifications and things like that for the disadvantaged or minority businesses or whatever you want to call it. I started to do research. And actually, at the time I had spoken with a woman who she was just really kind, and she was like, “I used to work with WBENC and let me just tell you more about it.” And it just felt like it was a much more comprehensive community-based sort of situation or certification than anything else that I had seen out there. There was a lot more programing, a lot more community, a lot more connectivity. And so, that’s what brought me in. And then I’ve been a certified WBE for now, I think three years. And we just had our conference out here in Denver where I’m located. And it just continues to give dividends.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s next for BlackTravelBox?

Orion Brown: Oh, my. I would say my focus now and has been for really almost the last year but continues to be, getting us into hotels. We’re in a hotel called Rooms in New York. We’re looking to get into other hotels within their sort of blanket of hotel groups, as well as talking to some of the major players. And that’s always a challenge, right, when you’re a small business. But we’re really hopeful for an opportunity to not only get into in-room, but get into sundry shops, get into their retail, etc., because we really want to be where our customers are. The challenge for most people is we can’t find you when we need you. And so, that is the focus as we go into this next phase of growth.

Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to connect with you and become part of the BlackTravelBox community, where should they go?

Orion Brown: Oh, yes. So, you can find us at BlackTravelBox.com, or you can find us on pretty much any social platform. Although I would lean towards Instagram, @BlackTravelBox. And if you’d like to find me, Iamorion_helana on Instagram.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Orion Brown: Thank you. I really appreciate you guys for having me. This was really fun.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.