In 2018, Maekaeda Gibbons had about $300 left after paying her bills, and she spent roughly $54 of it on bottles. The rest went to carrier oils so she could test formulas. She was working as a loan officer at Bank of America at the time.
The company she built with that money has never sold a piece of itself. Brown Sugar Babe grossed $21 million in 2025, a figure the company reports from its own sales dashboards and financial records, and it has taken no outside investment.
Growth on that model gets paid for out of pocket, and the numbers show it. She put about $1.2 million into construction, branding and the grand opening of a flagship store in Atlanta in 2025. She spent about $5.5 million over three months on roughly two years of inventory and ingredients. She said that if it meant maxing out a credit card to get the ingredients, raw materials and vessels she needed, that is what she did.
“Starting Brown Sugar Babe with $300 forced me to be disciplined from Day 1,” she said. Apart from that $300 of her own, no money has gone into the company that its own sales did not make.
The flagship sits at 1160 Ridge Avenue SW in Atlanta, and she has been plain about why a physical address mattered to a brand that built its sales online. “Digital is powerful, but physical space is legacy,” she said on February 27, 2026. “The store represents stability. It represents roots. It represents betting on ourselves long-term.”
“Ownership is permanent,” she said. “The flagship is a reminder that Black women deserve luxury without code-switching or shrinking.”
What that model buys her is the thing most founders trade away first. No investor signs off on the store, the inventory order or the next scent, because there is no investor. “Legacy through retail means we’re not just selling product. We’re building proof,” she said.
