Orion Brown, Founder & CEO of BlackTravelBox®, a premium clean beauty brand targeting women of color. She is a brand strategy professional with over fifteen years’ experience dynamically leading cross-functional teams across multiple industries within both large and small-cap businesses. Her areas of deep expertise include consumer insights-driven brand strategy, product and packaging innovation, operations, and portfolio management.

Orion is a lover of travel and food, spending most of her free time outside of her career pursuing the best of both.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I am a native Chicagoan that grew up with equal parts passion for reading National Geographic while imagining far-off places and immersing in the rich Black culture right in my neighborhood. There was something really magical about the south side of Chicago in the 80’s and 90’s. My summers were full of the smell of charcoal grills, fresh-cut grass, and the sound of girls counting down as they jump double dutch. As a so-called ‘latch-key’ kid, Walkman jam sessions of R&B/soul and learning to dance the cabbage patch was a regular pastime along the walk home. My mom worked just as hard as she did in her part-time jobs as she did create a home of warmth and intellectual stimulation in spite of being a single parent with limited resources. Going to college was never a question. From pretty much age 4 I lived in books. And it took me far.  As I got older and moved away after college I still held those memories of home close with me. Climbing the corporate ladder in banking, consumer products, and tech couldn’t shake it out of me. And as I began traveling the world, I learned that every place has its own special flavor of magic that’s uniquely home. 

What inspired you to start your business?

On a not-so-recent trip to Japan, I found myself thousands of miles from home with a major miscalculation of weather and a head full of hair with no hope. I didn’t have enough product to get me through the trip and there was nowhere locally I could find the products I needed. Dejected, I avoided the selfies and made the best of it. But upon reflection, I could only hope that someone would make a company to serve travelers like me. I searched and found there were none. So I created one. I started BlackTravelBox® to give women of color a brand they could trust for their travel personal care needs. As Black travelers, we have few places we can find products that work for our hair and skin care needs.

Where is your business based?

Denver, CO

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

BlackTravelBox® began as a passion project while I worked full time at Oracle. I am an avid traveler. And as a woman of color, I found myself frustrated with the lack of hair and skin care options in the 'travel' aisle. As a former Brand Manager, I missed creating and building brands. So I worked on it nights and weekends as time allowed. In late 2018, I left Oracle and put my talents full time into getting the brand ready for e-commerce launch. In 2019, I divided my time between seeking pre-seed investment and building the brand.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

We were featured on Beyonce.com in summer 2020 as a part of her Black Parade route promotion supporting up-and-coming Black-owned businesses. To this day we still get traffic and customers from this earned media placement. Absolute gold.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge has been getting out of my own way in many regards. Becoming an entrepreneur is more than just starting a business. It's a mindset. Or in my case, it has been a mind reset. I've had to unlearn so much from my corporate days while adapting the things that are valuable from it to my current situation. It affected everything from hiring (lord help me it’s hard) to finding and securing the right kind of funding and support.

How do you stay focused?

What motivates me the most is our customers. Every day I work on this business I'm keeping top of mind all the people who have hit me up on Linked In, via email, on social... saying "I see what you're doing, and I love it... keep going". The beauty industry is still broken for Black women. And there are some great new brands out there clearing a path - particularly in cosmetics. But for personal care, we've still got a long way to go industry-wise and I'm really excited to see BlackTravelBox be a part of that.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

Black women are woefully underrepresented in the beauty industry nonetheless, black travelers like me spend over $109.6 Billion annually on leisure travel and 9x other ethnicities on beauty and personal care. Yet there are no products on the market made for us as avid beauty consumers and avid travelers. Our products last longer, travel better, and are safe to use, so the only thing our customers have to worry about is the next destination.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Leaning into social media to drive awareness and then nurturing through email marketing. I’ve invested time, effort, and money into really building our brand’s voice and engaging our potential customers through email marketing. It’s enabled us to drive nearly 30% of sales via email, and build a robust list of thousands of engaged brand fans. 

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Use your gut and be relentless. There is something you uniquely bring to the world and to what you do. The only way to leverage that is to be true to yourself and learn to honor it.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

Right now my favorite app is Duo Lingo - it gives a fun, easy way to continue my development goals (dusting off my Spanish skills) while taking a much needed break from work to ‘play’. It's a great way to break up the monotony of zoom meetings and spreadsheets.

I just started the book Upper Hand by Sherrell Dorsey. It’s such a great reminder that in a world where Black and Brown founders are often left behind - our contribution to innovation in tech (and tech enabled) industries is incontrovertible. A much-needed reminder when building a company and facing the headwinds of ‘pattern matching’, financial inequality, and ignorance in everything from funding pitches to supplier meetings. 

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

I live in Trello - it’s like post-its for your brain. I’m a very visual learner and thinker so I dump all my ideas in Trello, add inspiration images, and then sort them into a coherent plan. My very first brand design was created that way.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I’ve been listening to a lot to Shaquille O'Neal interviews lately. He’s a brilliant self-made millionaire. But the thing that I find most interesting is that he started out like many basketball players… young, dumb, and confused about what to do with what he earned. He once spent a million dollars in one day. It was leaning into the advice of his accountant that taught him the value of being mindful and smart about how to invest in himself, his business, and in others. He takes everything he learns at face value and applies it. And today his story is the epitome of consistency and execution paying off. 

How do you balance work and life?

Right now, I wouldn't say I have balance. And that’s by design. There are a ton of stressors in the world right now, and we're all feeling it. And there are the ups and downs that life throws at us... still moving along as they do. So for me, work is cathartic. I find joy in the creation and nurturing of something. So in that way, BlackTravelBox has been a godsend. Also, my primary form of self-care for the last decade and a half has been travel. Without that, working on a travel-related business gives me a great excuse to scroll Instagram and daydream about far-flung places, if you consider that work. 

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

When I'm not doing anything business-related my biggest love is cooking. It's relaxing to me. I think I enjoy the process of preparing and plating the same way someone might enjoy painting. It's a creative outlet.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

We’re currently gearing up for new product launches, a really cool content project to create a video that really tells our story, and exploring opportunities in retail both in the US and abroad.

How can our readers connect with you?

You can find us at www.blacktravelbox.com and @blacktravelbox on all social platforms. And you can find me on IG @orion_helana.