CHICAGO, April 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Mielle Organics, the #1 fast-growing, Black-owned, and community-focused pure hair care firm, introduced as we speak that Berkshire Partners, a Boston-based agency, has made a big funding within the firm. Berkshire sometimes makes fairness investments of $100 million to $1 billion in dimension. The financing will help Mielle’s progress plans and assist additional its mission to coach, empower, and excite Mielle’s clients and the broader hair care neighborhood. A portion of Berkshire’s funding might be used to help Mielle’s More Than a Strand program, which is core to the corporate’s mission to strengthen the bond between moms, daughters, and younger women throughout the United States, Caribbean, and Africa. Company co-founders Monique and Melvin Rodriguez (CEO and COO, respectively) will proceed to be majority house owners and keep management of the corporate. Additional phrases of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
“We are excited to forge this historic partnership with Berkshire Partners,” stated Mielle CEO and co-founder Monique Rodriguez. “Their funding reinforces our mission for neighborhood improvement and progress of Mielle’s imaginative and prescient of world growth. We are additionally thrilled to proceed this journey with New Voices. They believed in Mielle from the start and have really been a terrific accomplice. These are the forms of steps it takes to create generational wealth and jobs for folks of shade. We are really grateful for his or her partnership.”
This funding caps a formidable interval of progress for Mielle, which final yr noticed category-leading progress charges regardless of the challenges of a pandemic that led greater than 40% of Black-owned companies to shutter. It additionally marks a significant milestone for Ms. Rodriguez as solely 93 Black ladies founders have secured $1 million in funding funding for his or her corporations, in keeping with ProjectDiane, a biennial report on the state of Black and Latinx ladies founders by the group digitalundivided. Through Mielle Organics’ historic funding take care of Berkshire, Monique has paved the way in which for women-led corporations to surpass the bounds of glass ceilings society has conditioned us to consider are unbreakable for ladies of shade.
“We began this enterprise in our storage, sparked by Monique’s ardour to construct a worldwide neighborhood of ladies,” added Melvin Rodriguez, co-founder and COO. “During the previous seven years, we have been capable of increase our product strains, enhance our distribution and spend money on our neighborhood; we’re excited to proceed innovating and creating new merchandise, develop consciousness of Mielle, and attain much more customers to present them merchandise that they deserve.”
“We are honored to speculate behind Monique and Melvin and in Mielle,” stated Marni Payne, Managing Director at Berkshire Partners. “Mielle is a unprecedented enterprise, however importantly has a bigger objective: to excite, empower and serve the neighborhood. Monique and Melvin have constructed this enterprise from the bottom up; we share their imaginative and prescient and are excited to help them as they proceed their journey of progress and neighborhood.”
“When my household and I offered Sundial Brands in 2017, one in all our said missions was particularly to speculate no less than $100 million in ladies of shade entrepreneurs by the New Voices Fund and different efforts; our imaginative and prescient was that when given the chance, Black ladies entrepreneurs will convey transformative wealth creation to their households and our communities. What Monique and Melvin are carrying out with Mielle is a robust instance of the affect a profitable and purposeful Black woman-owned enterprise can have in driving financial affect to our neighborhood,” stated Richelieu Dennis, founding father of the New Voices Fund, Essence Ventures, and Sundial Brands.
Dennis provides, “I’m proud that they selected to accomplice with New Voices in 2019, and I’m much more excited to accomplice with Monique, Melvin and Berkshire Partners on this subsequent leg of their historic journey the place I totally anticipate to assist them surpass our successes and affect within the magnificence house. This is what creating fairness and shutting the wealth hole seems to be like – us investing in us in order that there usually are not just some of us, however hundreds of us creating generational wealth to reinvest in our communities.”
William Blair & Company, L.L.C. served because the unique monetary advisor to Mielle and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP served as authorized counsel.
Press Contact:Martine Charles(206) 295-9114[email protected]
Jennifer McIntosh203-461-4461[email protected]
SOURCE Mielle Organics
