“It is in our darkest moment that you must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle Onassis
Richlieu Dennis was born in Monrovia on February 25, 1969. He travelled to the United States in 1987 to attend college and graduated in 1991 from Babson College in Massachusetts, a college that trains young entrepreneurs. Richlieu intended to return to Liberia after graduation and start a citrus farm; however, due to civil war at home in Liberia, Richlieu could not return home. Effectively a refugee, Richlieu hit survival mode. Armed with $100 in his pocket and his grandmother’s recipe, Richlieu, along with his mom, Mary Dennis, an economist, and his college roommate, Nyema Tubman, started Sundial Brands out of necessity.
He began by making soaps developed from his grandmother’s formula in his dormitory room and selling them on the streets of New York, from a card table, to survive. His grandmother, who was widowed at 19, sold hair products made from her formula in West Africa to support her children. By the 1990s, the Shea Moisture line, which later became a subsidiary of Richlieu’s Sundial Brands, was thriving. Richlieu assumed the role of CEO and grew the business, adding SheaMoisture, Nubian Heritage, Nyakio, and Madam C. J. Walker to his beauty line. He carved out a unique niche for the enterprise, providing natural skin care and beauty products for people of colour in the United States.
During the initial 24 years of Sundial’s existence, Richlieu did not accept any outside investment in his business. He learned how to grow a business and slowly built his company into a $240 million skin and personal care behemoth in New York. He compared scaling a company to using a recipe for 150 people instead of 4 family members.
In 2017, Richlieu sold Sundial Brands to Unilever, a giant cosmetics company, for $1.6 billion, boosting his net worth by $350-$400 million. As a part of the deal, Richlieu created a $100 million fund, New Voices Fund, to empower Black female entrepreneurs in the United States. He also founded the New Voices Foundation to empower Black female entrepreneurs by enhancing their skills, strengthening their leadership, and expanding their networking opportunities to help them realize their visions. That same year, he founded Essence Ventures, and a year later, he purchased Essence Magazine from Time, Inc.
In 2017, Richlieu was admitted into the Most Venerable Order of the Knighthood of the Pioneers with the title of Knight Grand Commander, Liberia’s highest national award, by Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, for his remarkable success in business and his work in the Black communities of America.
How did a young refugee boy turn his life around and become a billionaire? What can we learn from the story of Richelieu? A lot, but we will focus on three: finding a niche, turning your pain into gain, and searching in your past for workable solutions.
Find a niche. Finding your niche means finding a unique place, a unique corner, and a unique group for yourself in the marketplace and serving that corner. For Richlieu, he focused on the Black community in the United States that did not have hair and beauty products to match the texture of their hair or the colour of their skin. In an interview with Forbes in 2018, Richlieu said that the only products available to women of colours in those days were for “chemical straightening and perming.” There was a big market out there of people who had been ignored, who just wanted products that made them feel comfortable in their natural skin and using their natural hair. He said that as they sold on the streets and engaged with their customers, they realized how much these people had been ignored, people who simply wanted to “live their natural lifestyles.” He identified his niche and catered to their needs. In the process, he became a multimillionaire.
What’s your niche? Have you identified a unique, often overlooked group that you can serve by providing tailored solutions?
Transform your pain to gain. In a 2023 interview with Forbes, Richlieu states, “We started our company out of a need to survive.” When asked what motivated him to get out of bed in those early years, he said that it was hunger. He had to pay his rent, pay for health insurance, and survive.
When pain hits you and you feel like giving up, push through. If anything, just strive to survive; your relief may be just around the corner. Many times, I share this anecdote with groups of people that I speak with: those who engage in weightlifting have a belief that when the muscles are struggling to keep the weight atop, it is a sign that the muscle is about to add on a few pounds. It is true that when in pain and agony, you are very close to experiencing transformation.
Tap into the past. When confronted with the need to survive, Richlieu returned to his roots in West Africa. He remembered the recipes his grandmother used back in West Africa to first make a living for himself and then grow his business empire. He used recipes that were centuries old but that had never been replicated on an industrial scale. In his bathtub, using his African ingredients, he produced black soaps, hair products, and other personal care products, sealed them in Ziploc bags, and sold them on the streets of Harlem, New York. In the process, he created a multimillion-dollar company and became one of the wealthiest Black entrepreneurs worldwide.
