The Shelf Audit Files No. 04 — Buy Direct

You can buy the exact same Black-owned lipstick two different ways. Off the shelf at a big-box store, or from the founder's own website. Same lipstick, same founder, usually the same number on the sticker. 

Those two purchases are not the same purchase. One of them hands a cut to the store. The other one does not. That difference is this entire book, and it is the one thing nobody prints on the back of the box. 

Every other book in this series asks who owns the company. This one asks something else: which road did your money take to get there. Five Black-owned beauty brands — four still owned by the founder who built them, one now inside a Black-led holding company and labelled as such — all five sold straight from the source, with what each one costs and exactly where to type the address.