Kimberly Smith opened Brown Beauty Co-op in Washington, D.C. in 2020 with a straightforward premise: a beauty retail store that carried only Black-owned brands, staffed by people who used and believed in the products, in a city with a large Black population that had historically had to travel to find the brands they wanted in a concentrated retail environment.
The store launched during the same period of heightened awareness around supporting Black-owned businesses that followed the summer of 2020 -- but Smith had been building toward it before the cultural moment arrived. The concept was not a response to a news cycle. It was a retail thesis that the moment then amplified.
Brown Beauty Co-op carries brands across skincare, hair care, body care, makeup, and wellness -- all Black-owned, all curated by Smith and her team based on product quality and alignment with the store's community-first ethos. The physical retail environment is designed to feel like a discovery space rather than a traditional beauty counter: products are presented with founder stories and brand context, and staff are trained to make recommendations based on individual needs.
“Every dollar spent here goes back to a Black business. That is the entire model.”
The model matters because it changes the retail relationship for Black beauty brands. In mainstream retail, Black-owned brands compete for shelf space against brands with larger marketing budgets, deeper distribution relationships, and more established buyer relationships. At Brown Beauty Co-op, Black-owned brands are the category. That shift in context -- from niche within a large retailer to the entire product selection at a dedicated store -- changes how customers engage with those brands.
Smith has described the store as a community hub as much as a retail operation. Events, brand activations, and founder appearances make the physical space a destination rather than a transaction point. That is a different kind of business than most beauty retail -- and exactly the kind of business that the brands Brown Beauty Co-op carries were built to be part of.
