DURHAM – A Cincinnati-based startup, Healthy Roots, which creates dolls and storybooks to reinforce the positive self-perception of young girls of color, won the Startup Stampede worth $100,000 in marketing services from McKinney Monday night at the American Underground campus in Durham.
Yelitsa Jean-Charles, founder and CEO, inspired by her own experiences growing up and movements such as Black Lives Matter, created Healthy Roots in 2015 to foster positive self-image in young girls of color at early stages of their identity development.
She prevailed in a showcase that matched nine startups emerging with consumer-focused products and services that had participated in the first cohort of the American Underground Startup Stampede incubator program which opened in March.
Jean-Charles, who has a degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Gender, Race, & Sexuality, was recognized on Essence Magazine’s 2017 50 founders to watch list.
Yelitsa Jean-Charles, founder and CEO of Healthy Roots Dolls. Copyright 2018, Capitol Broadcasting Company. All Rights Reserved.
The company raised $50,000 on Kickstarter, exceeding its original $30,000 goal, Jean-Charles said, “Because so many people wanted this product. It received a grant from Brown University’s Social Innovation Fellowship, participated in the MassChallenge Accelerator, and received a fellowship with the Venture America project.
Heathy Roots raised $85,000 in backing from Venture America, its first investor, and Backstage Capital, which focuses on companies founded by women, people of color and LGBT individuals.
The Healthy Roots dolls will have a medley of facial features, skin tones, and hair textures that can be styled. “Our goal is to represent the voices of young girls of color in the toy industry with products that show how beautiful they really are,” Jean-Charles said.
The company’s first product, Zoe, is an African American doll with naturally curly hair. It is 18 inches tall with hair that mimics natural hair textures. It takes orders for the dolls on its website.
Zoe, the first doll made by Heathy Roots.
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Jean-Charles noted in her presentation that she hopes to align with “trusted beauty brands” that make hair and beauty products aimed at her customers. The doll, she said, “Teaches natural hair care.”
She also pointed out that 77 percent of African Americans say they want toys representative of their color and culture.
Doll sales, she said, topped 2.91 billion in 2016 and increased 6 percent by mid-year 2017.
Like her eight competitors in the Startup Stampede competition, she plans to use technology in her marketing, tapping mommy bloggers and influencers on social media.
“We need to solidify our space in the toy industry and McKinney an help us do that,” she said, explaining what she wanted from the competition.
Other finalists in the competition, which “caused spirited debate among the judges,” who included representatives from McKinney, Burt’s Bees, and Ad Age, were:
- Wotter, based in Cary, which is making atheletic swim gear female athletes, employing tech-crafted materials and “female forward styling to foster individual expression and self confidence for female swimmers.
- Descalza, a Latin-inspired, hand-crafted clothing line that fuses modern fashion and artisan textiles. The company makes the clothing in North Carolina communities, including Morganton, Sanford, and Burlington.
More details about the Startup Stampede program and the other seven startups in the cohort is available online.
