Homegirling is a verb: Brittany Brathwaite on starting a feminist business

Visual by Sadé

Name: Brittany Brathwaite

Pronouns: Her/She

Digital: thehomegirlbox.com / @thehomegirlbox / The Homegirl Box / @thehomegirlbox

Email: thehomegirlbox@gmail.com

A non-profit that everyone should give to: EveryBlackGirl

ReproJobs: You co-founded The Homegirl Box. Can you tell us a bit about it and why you started it?

Brittany Brathwaite: The Homegirl Box is a gift box inspired by the life and legacy of bold and visionary women of color. We’re also feminist worker-owned cooperative with deep social justice values. Mickey (my co-creator and best friend) and I first dreamed up what would become The Homegirl Box on our 25th birthday. In that year of our lives (2015) we were both thinking critically about sisterhood and the celebration of women and femmes. I believe we first thought about creating a whole museum that best friends, sisters, homegirls could go to, and see the lives, labor and fierceness of women, especially women of color, celebrated. We knew that would take some time to develop, so after almost a year and half of ideating and hearing from our community we went with our “smaller” minimal viable product (MVP) which ultimately became what we now know as The Homegirl Box.  

You and Mickey co-founded The Homegirl Box together, right? Can you talk about what it’s like to create and become an entrepreneur with another person?

I love working in partnership. In fact, there is no other way I’d rather do it. When I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I read so many blogs about how going into business with your best friend was the worst thing you could ever do. I’m glad I did not listen --- because partnering in my business ventures is the best decision I've made in my whole journey. Mickey and I have a deep level of accountability and responsibility to each other and what we create. Everything The Homegirl Box has created was a collaboration between both of our brains, hearts and hands -- everything from box curation to instagram posts is a collective effort.  There’s so much abundance in knowing that you can share your dreams, ideas, and fears with someone. Homegirling is a verb, a work ethic, and a value at our company. I still get goosebumps thinking about how beautiful and comforting it was to take that risk together. 

It feels like The Homegirl Box is a celebration of radical and ratchet women of color who are creating in different mediums, and then they’re sent to folks of color for self- and community-care. How do you see your work as part of lifting up entrepreneurs and spreading community care?

I love radical and ratchet as a description, we may need to use that! Lifting up other entrepreneurs is central to the mission of The Homegirl Box. When we first started we were lumped under the subscription box category since that was the wave back in 2017 when we officially launched. We rejected the subscription model and were constantly “coached” about the “better” profit margin it offered. We haven’t made a real profit from The Homegirl Box since our founding. Mostly because we pay every single creator/artist/entrepreneur featured in The Homegirl Box. We don’t believe single mamas or trans college students can pay their rent or maintain their businesses with exposure. We are creating a new economy where women, femmes and gnc folk of color are paid for their labor. This is also why you won’t see many sales at The Homegirl Box because we aren’t really interested in doing the math to discount folk’s’ labor. Building a platform and providing a space for small businesses to show folks their work also requires flexibility and deep relationship building. Sometimes we are building and talking to creators for up to 6 months before a box comes out. We know that people have real lives outside of their businesses and craft and we think in order to honor that you must co-create a timeline that allows that. We didn’t think a subscription model would allow for that — as organizers, it wasn’t in line with how we understood care. I often feel like some of our values are actually anti-commerce and don’t always yield the results that businesses are expected to meet but honestly that’s cool. We will always choose community over capitalism. Always. 

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about yourself and/or the work as you became an entrepreneur? What advice would you share with others who might want to do the same?

So many. Here are my two biggest lessons. One: I learned that you are supposed to fail. Failure is an amazing tool if you acknowledge it. As a Black woman I was told consistently that failure was a thing I wasn’t allowed to do — even punished for it as a child. But as an entrepreneur, I needed to create a new relationship with failure — it’s the only way I could learn to pivot or receive feedback. But embracing failure, especially for people of color, is a muscle you have to build in the gym — I build that muscle mostly by telling people when I fail. 

The second is related to failing but more of a mantra — “the first time you do something is your best time.” I don’t ever say things like “could have been better” or “this wasn’t my best work.” The first time I create something new, I know that is my best work. It’s funny when I realize that all the things I’m comparing it to are actually fictional or imaginary because they don’t yet exist — how could I know they would be better? Entrepreneurship is hard but this mindset invites me to approach the task from a place of surrender & ease. 

Do you see your work part of the larger efforts to eradicate white supremacy and misogyny?

Absolutely! I think it’s hard to see how you’re doing your part to destroy such large systems of oppression (especially if it’s not explicitly stated in the mission or vision of your work). I’ve come to think of my work at The Homegirl Box as my political home even though it doesn’t fit the definition of a “traditional organizing space.” I feel like we are working to create the culture that proudly says “F*ck the Patriarchy” through art and apparel. We don’t hold our tongue on our social profiles — we use our platform wherever possible to uplift movement work. We support the movement whenever we can — we donate to small grassroots organizations, abortion funds, Mama’s Day Bailout and try to highlight social justice organizations that don’t have large individual donor bases or large marketing and development teams. It’s going to take resources to up-end these harmful systems, we see ourselves as part of the ecosystem that will help us get there. 

What do you do when you’re feeling stuck creatively?

I have a whole process around this nowI I first sleep on it and then I draw it (there are so many things I can’t speak or write but for some reason I can draw). I also go find inspiration — I seek it out usually through books, more specifically books written by Black women. 

What’s your reflection routine?

I’m queen of the retrospective. I learned this tool from my friend Sasha Ahuja. Basically you look back at any set/period of time and ask yourself three questions. What’s working? Where did I get stuck? What do I need to do differently moving forward? I try to do a personal retrospective every month  

Is there a tech thing or program you can’t live without?

Yes, absolutely. Post its, moleskine notebooks without lines, and a physical paper planner. I need to see things in my own handwriting to really understand them. I like post its because I can move them around and organize them (they never have to be linear, which is often what happens when we write in a notebook). In 2018 I stopped writing in notebooks vertically (portrait), I only write horizontally (landscape). My world had so much to offer when I stopped creating “tall, thin lists” in my notebooks. Landscape offers me so much space, so much more abundance. 

What’s Spotify channel are you listening to these days?

I love listening to the Black Girl Magic and Are and Be playlist on Spotify. If I find myself too in my head listening to music will always help me shift. I also have a playlist called “Survival” that I created in grad school filled with gospel songs from the 90s and 00s — I start everyday with that playlist.