Meet Barbara Biney and Sydni Williams, Emory School of Medicine students and founders in The Hatchery Incubator.
“For many years women of color have been manipulating their natural curls to artificially straighten their hair to conform to a specific western European look,” Biney said, delving into the history that inspired her to start her venture. “In recent years, there has been a natural hair movement where women of color are no longer straightening their hair but embrace their natural curls and afros. Unfortunately learning how to style, protect, and maintain naturally curly hair comes with a huge learning curve of figuring out what products to use and how to use them.”
Besties Box, LLC hopes to diminish this burden through our custom subscription box service. Besties Box (@mybestiesbox), is a premium subscription box service where customers receive a monthly box of textured hair specific product samples tailored to their needs.Products are selected based on the customer’s generated results from the Besties Box online quiz. Once a customer has found the product that works well for them, they can purchase it on an automated subscription basis from Besties Box. Besties Box was founded as a result of Barbara’s own struggle to find hair products that work for her hair. This business has been in development for over one year and earlier this year, Barbara was joined by Sydni Williams, a third-year medical student who identifies with Barbara’s experience with her natural hair and has a sustained passion for empowering women of color, media, and social media marketing.
"Our hope is that women of color will find Besties Box to be a space where they can feel empowered to love and embrace their natural hair without any limits. We have carefully cultivated a virtual Besties community for women to travel their hair journey with other women and natural hair specialists by their side. I feel especially privileged to have the opportunity to provide women with a more stress-free and natural hair experience than Barbara and I were able to have.”
Update: Barbara and Sydni participated in The Hatchery Summer Incubator (2023) and Besties Box launched its first influencer campaign. Besties Box has also been accepted into the 2023-2024 year Incubator Cohort.