The Shelf Audit Files No. 04 — Buy Direct
A Lip Bar lipstick runs $9 to $15. You can pick it up off a Target shelf, or you can buy it at thelipbar.com. Same lipstick, same founder, usually the same number on the sticker.Those are not the same purchase. One of them hands a cut to the store. The other one does not.In April 2021 Target committed, in its own press release, to spending more than $2 billion with Black-owned businesses and carrying 500 or more Black-owned brands by 2025. On 24 January 2025 it announced it was rolling the work back. Then came the harder part: a number of Black founders whose products sit on those shelves publicly asked shoppers not to boycott, because a lost shelf sale costs the founder, not the chain. Melissa Butler of The Lip Bar was one of them.That knot is why this book exists, and it has an exit. Every other book in this series asks who owns the company. This one asks which road your money took to get there. Five Black-owned beauty brands, all five still owned by their founders, all five sold straight from the source, with what each one costs and exactly where to type the address.Part One: The Same Jar, Two Roads · What the Store Announced · Forty Days, and the Founders Who Said Do Not · The Two With Famous Names · The Three You Go Find Yourself.Part Two: Five Brands, Side by Side · What to Put in Your Cart · The Word to Type Is Official.Three things that did not fit in the video: the Target program had a name, REACH, Racial Equity Action and Change, and the supplier-diversity team was renamed Supplier Engagement, so you can search the paperwork yourself instead of taking our word for it; the two ownership facts are printed with their qualifiers rather than without, The Lip Bar's $6.7 million growth round in 2022 and Tracee Ellis Ross holding majority ownership of Pattern after taking partners for capital; and the two brands most people expect on a list like this, Mented Cosmetics and Black Girl Sunscreen, are named with the exact reason each one is off it.Every ownership fact and every price in this guide carries the date we verified it. Ownership changes without warning and prices move weekly, so a dated fact tells you exactly how much to trust it. Prices in this edition were verified 29 June 2026.Found an error? Tell us and we fix it in public: a dated changelog entry within 72 hours, a corrected file pushed free to everyone who bought this edition, and credit to you by name if you want it. Refund on request, no argument.These guides are funded by readers, not sponsors, and carry no affiliate links. Every claim is an ownership, price, or verifiable product fact with a dated source. We never make health claims about any brand.
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