As cofounder of New Voices Fund; owner of Essence magazine; and founder, CEO, and Executive Chairman of Sundial Brands—a $1 billion natural hair and skincare company—Richelieu Dennis has achieved success on many fronts. But his journey has been anything but traditional including attending our Owner/President Management Program (OPM).
"If someone had told my 17-year-old self that I would build one of the largest natural beauty companies that's ever existed, I would have said 'yeah, right,'" said Richelieu.
Born in Liberia, Richelieu grew up amid the country's bloody civil war. Scared for his safety, his mother, Mary Dennis, spent years trying to get him out of the country. The opportunity finally came for Richelieu through a scholarship to Babson College, where he graduated with a degree in business.
But just hours after his mother flew out of Liberia to attend Richelieu's graduation ceremony, rebels invaded and destroyed their home. By the time Mary arrived in the U.S., she had nothing left but the two bags she carried.
With no job, no plan, and no home to return to, Richelieu turned to a family tradition: creating natural bath and body products. Using his grandmother's recipes, he and his mother began selling soaps on the streets of New York City.
"We needed a place to stay and food to eat until things settled down back home," Richelieu said. "So we started mixing different soaps and selling them on 125th and 5th in Harlem. It wasn't a business plan—it started as a way to survive."
While today's consumers are familiar with the therapeutic properties of African black soap and shea butter, in 1992, these ingredients were not well known in the U.S. But word spread—and within a few weeks, street vendors were asking to sell the products.
"That's when it started to click for me," Richelieu said. "Our process looked nothing like what I had learned at school, but I started piecing a distribution network together. We began selling on the street and then started selling to other vendors, at flea markets and county fairs, and in mom-and-pop shops."
Together with his mother and college roommate, Nyema Tubman, Richelieu launched Sundial Brands. He continued to "connect the dots" until he created an informal distribution channel that stretched across the country. That’s when things really started to pick up. As the company and its distribution volume grew, Richelieu remained committed to giving back to the community every step of the way.
"We developed what we call 'community commerce.' It's this idea of leveraging our business to invest back in our communities," Richelieu said. "No matter where we go or what we do, we bring the community up with us."
In 2017, Sundial Brands was acquired by Unilever. Together, the purpose-driven partnership created the $100M New Voices Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to investing in and empowering female entrepreneurs of color.
In spite of his success, Richelieu knew he had more to learn. "My mother has a saying—if you're not learning, you're not growing. If you're not growing, you're dying," Richelieu said. "When you build a business, you owe it to your people, your consumers, and your partners to learn how to be better." This led him to apply to Harvard Business School Executive Education's esteemed Owner/President Management program, a learning opportunity designed specifically for company president owners who want to expand their management skills, confidence, and vision.
The nine-week program provided a valuable lesson—that is, to step back and take a look at the field. "While we had done a lot of things, I had never stopped to look at what we were doing," Richelieu said. "Realizing that was a game changer for me, and the program gave me the tools I needed to execute on what I discovered." After the program, he did just that—and started making moves that revamped the brand's supply chain, product innovation, and distribution models. Today, Sundial Brands is worth an estimated $1 billion.
While the company's growth has been remarkable, Richelieu's goal remains to the same: Move Sundial forward while simultaneously lifting up the community.
"We want to leverage the resources we've acquired to invest back in businesses with the same fundamentals we had 20-something years ago," Richelieu said. "One Sundial isn't enough. We want to help other entrepreneurs and companies, especially those from the black community, get to where we are today."
