A perfect match: how bandages became inclusive, with Intisar Bashir & Dom Apollon - Episode 8

IB 0:00

A lot of the big corporations have got wind of how much they could potentially make by catering to our community. And they've jumped on the bandwagon.

TS 0:15

Welcome to Made For Us, a podcast about the intersection of innovation and inclusion. It's for anyone who's curious about how to develop products that work better for all of us. This week, I have two guests joining me on the show. My first guest is Intisar Bashir, the co founder and CEO of Browndages, a company that sells bandages in a range of skin tones. Intisar and her husband Rashid started Browndages in twenty-eighteen after spotting a gap in the market, none of the major bandage manufacturers were catering to an increasingly diverse population. In the interview, we talked about how that's now changed. Johnson and Johnson, for example, launched its own line of inclusive bandages in twenty-twenty one. Intisar also fills me in on what happened after Browndages' appearance on Shark Tank last year.

IB 0:56

I was not fully aware of the reach of the show. I knew its popularity in the States. But the amount of exposure that it gave us worldwide. We've been contacted from people in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India and Qatar in Kuwait in Kenya.

TS 1:15

My other guest today is Dom Apollon. Dom's tweet in twenty-nineteen about wearing a skin tone bandage for the first time went viral. And inspired the UK supermarket chain Tesco to launch bandages, aka plasters in different skin tones.

DA 1:29

Just seeing the way it blended in. It gave me this unfamiliar sense of belonging, of being seen and being valued. I knew that this company had taken the time to think about people, black people like me, or people of color with darker skin tones.

TS 1:47

First, let's hear from Intisar Bashir.

IB 1:50

My name is Intisar Bashir. I am one of the co founders and the CEO of Browndages. We are a first aid care business that specializes in flesh tone inclusive products. Our flagship product is our assorted bandages box. It comes with five shades of bandages in it, ranging from sand all the way to ebony, my husband and I founded the business in twenty-eighteen. At that time, we had three children. Now we currently have four. So we have a 13 year old, 11 year old eight year old and a two year old. They also were the inspiration behind the characters for our children's bandages as well.

TS 2:32

So the idea was to provide flesh tone bandages, but also bandages with children's characters on them. So can you just talk about the two different types of products that you have?

IB 2:42

Yes, our children's line of bandages offers bandages with images on it of children in professions that they can actually aspire to. So our two flagship children's tins were actually characters that we designed off of the likeness of our own children. So our oldest Nayla the chef, Yasmine, the veterinarian, Tyheer the astronaut, and Zane, he's one of my really good friends son, a pilot. So we we wanted them to literally see themselves in the characters that we produced and put them in professions that they could actually grow and aspire to.

TS 3:24

And also, I remember reading about the impact that it's had on your own children and their career aspirations.

IB 3:30

Yes, at the time, so my 13 year old, she was like seven or eight or something like that when we started. So career path was nowhere, like in her mind, you know, I mean, so we just picked different careers that we thought were be cool, or would translate well into a character. And so she, my oldest, she was depicted as a chef, and my second oldest, she was depicted as a veterinarian. And I guess just over the years, like my oldest, she started gravitating towards baking like, she was like, I want to own a bakery and stuff like that. So and then my, my 11 year old, she has taken an affinity to animals. And so she's just she knows if she sees a dog on the street, she's that's this. I'm not an animal person. So I don't really know dog breeds and stuff like that, but she's able to, like, rattle off like, this is a chocolate lab. And I'm just like, Oh, okay. Sure, you know, go with it. I'm never one to like, try to like push them away from like, learning more or anything like that. So I just continue to encourage them whether or not they actually go into those fields, like they're still young, but just seeing themselves in those images, has sparked something, unlocked something in their mind to even start to think about the possibility of doing those things.

TS 5:00

And also I was interested in the story behind the name and even the slogan as well. What inspired that?

IB 5:06

My husband, he is a children's book author. So he has a way with words. So he was the one who came up with our brand name. So our 'Heal in Silence' tagline is one that he came up with. And it's, it's when you really look at it, it is the goal of our business, allowing individuals of all different shades to heal in silence, like to be able to walk in the room and not one of the first things a person sees on you is a stark contrast bandage to your flesh. So we want to provide the opportunity for people to heal in silence, and go about their day and not have to answer unwarranted questions.

TS 5:51

So you made the decision to launch this product. But when you looked at the potential market size, How confident were you that there were enough people who wanted bandages that match their skin tone, and that there was a big enough market for this?

IB 6:07

I forget the numbers at this point. But when we ran the numbers on just like the bandage industry, in general, it's astounding. I don't know about in different parts of the world. But here in the United States, there is one big conglomerate that everybody knows, you know, I mean, and so at the time, they were not producing flesh tone bandages for black and brown people. And so we said, hey, like why not? There's no large company that is catering to our community. Since then, a lot of the big corporations have got wind of how much they could potentially make by catering to our community. And they've, they've jumped on the bandwagon. And it's not really much that we can do with that, to combat that. Because they're large corporations, we're just a small mom and pop family owned business, we'll just we'll continue to cater to our community, which is was like our mission all along. And so I'd like to believe that as long as we stay the course, eventually, the bigger corporations will unfortunately, forget about us again. And then we will will hopefully still be here.

TS 7:32

I asked Intisar about her experience on Shark Tank where she and her husband were offered a one hundred thousand dollar investment and a seventy-five thousand dollar line of credit from three sharks, including Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. I wanted to know if they went on the show with a specific outcome in mind.

IB 7:48

So going into it, you have to come up with a deal that you want to present to the investors. So we took our time to develop what percentage we were willing to give up for what dollar amount and stuff like that. But ultimately, what we wanted to get out of Shark Tank was like a distribution deal getting our products in front of more people, at retailers around the world, around the country. What doesn't show on the show is like after the fact you have to do like all of your due diligence and stuff like that, and run the numbers and see if it makes sense for your business. And if it makes sense for their business to acquire a portion of your company. So with that being said, what they wanted out of the deal was to sell our business to a larger company. And what I said what we wanted out of the deal was a distribution deal to get our products in CVS, Walmart, Target any of those, like kind of mainstream stores. And so our visions did not align and so therefore we didn't, we didn't close our deal with them.

TS 9:03

Okay, so in the end, you decided to part company that didn't actually pan out.

IB 9:08

So you have that option. Like on the show, it's a handshake deal. It's an agreement that you come up with within 20 minutes, but there's a lot more like behind the scenes after the show happens. Lawyers meeting and stuff like that, that you have to still come to an agreement on and so we didn't agree on the direction that we want it to go and so therefore, we didn't sign with them yet.

TS 9:32

How did you feel about that? Because they made some pretty sort of big promises. I think Mark Cuban was talking about a co branding deal.

IB 9:42

Initially, it was a bit disheartening, but after, like one, further research and finding out like the percentage of deals that actually don't close on the show. It was like oh, okay, we're not an anomaly, we're not the only one that this is happening to. And two like, we are firm believers that what is meant for us, is meant for us. And clearly, that just wasn't a direction that was meant for our business to go in. If we couldn't see eye to eye on what we wanted to do with the business with potential investors, then there's no real amount of money that we'll have us change the direction of where we want our business to go.

TS: 10:30

Okay? And could you explain why you don't think selling the company to one of the bigger players in the industry is an option for you.

IB: 10:39

For us, we want our business to be something that we can hand down to our children and selling it to a larger corporation will, it might give you an initial large payout or something like that, it's not something that can essentially create generational wealth for our family, it will just be like a one time thing. And it's easy to burn through one large lump sum of money, as opposed to handing down a company that will hopefully continue to generate wealth for our family for generations.

TS: 11:16

Right. So you're very much thinking about the long term.

IB: 11:19

Yes.

TS: 11:21

But but at the same time, I guess, going on Shark Tank must have been great for the company. I mean, in terms of the publicity and brand awareness. Can you talk about the impact of that?

IB: 11:30

Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I was not fully aware of the reach of the show, like I knew its popularity in in the States. But the amount of exposure that it gave us worldwide, like we've we've been contacted from people in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India, in Qatar, in Kuwait, in Kenya, I just didn't know. And maybe that's like a fault of mine of not really researching the show, or just thinking that it was just here in the United States. But the reach of the show is very, like it's it's like to this day, and like I said, that was about almost a year and a half, two years ago, we still get contacted off of people just seeing the episode and saying, Oh, wow, I'm so excited that I found your product. I just saw your episode of Shark Tank. And I'm just like, wow, I guess that medium of television, it really, you just never know the reach of it, really.

TS: 12:30

And so the product is stocked in stores all across the US, I believe. What are your plans in terms of distribution?

IB: 12:37

One of our biggest goals is to get our products in the hospitals and doctors offices. So that that's our next goal in distributing our products is getting in those industries and not necessarily in retail, because retail space is very, it's kind of hard to break into. And especially right now while I feel like the flesh tone bandage, it's kind of flooded right now. So we're not so much focusing on the retail side of things anymore.

TS: 13:14

I also wanted to go back to twenty-twenty, because that was quite a big year for the business. Can you talk me through that year and the impact that the events of twenty-twenty had on your business?

IB: 13:27

Yes. So back in twenty-twenty, so we were barely I want to say two years into our business, we're still figuring things out. A large part of our business was done in person and different trade shows or different things like that, with COVID, the world kind of shut down so that that really limited our reach. We really enjoyed getting in front of people, and presenting our product to them. And at the same time the social unrest happened. And so it was a really, it was a really interesting time in that through all of that unrest and that sadness and that anger, I will say I feel like our community as like black people, like we really, really stood up and stood together. And like the amount of support that we got during that time, the inventory that we had, like in stock that we had projected would last us for the remainder of our of that year, it sold out within six days. And that was just solely based off of community support, word of mouth, people sharing posts on Instagram, like it was like a viral moment for us because at that time people were sharing businesses in every category that were black owned that hey, you need this product, buy from this company, you don't need to go get it from the larger companies like that. So the amount of support that we received during that time from our community was amazing. I mean, we couldn't have predicted it, it was nothing that we could have prepared for. But we were, like, grateful for that, that time and that acknowledgement of our community supporting us.

TS: 15:27

Right. And I think you said on Shark Tank that it was about almost a year's worth of revenue in that you made in the in those six days.

IB: 15:36

Yes, yes, it was. It got to the point, like, we use the Shopify platform, and it's, I have the app on my phone. And so it dings every time, I had to, like, turn off my notifications, because it was so it was, so it was literally overwhelming. Like, because I didn't even I didn't know what was happening as it was happening. Our business was being posted on very large platforms, and I was just not able to keep up. And so my sister like, she called me in, or she like screenshotted, and sent me this and I was just like, oh, wow, that's why my phone has been going crazy unity. And so it was just, it was it was a blessing to be able to be a part of that, be a part of that impact that was happening during that time. And so that's why I know that if we are able, as a community as like black and brown people to sustain that, I have no, like, qualms about continuing our business. I know that's not going to ever be like duplicated or anything like that. But it's like bandages are a product that will be needed from here until eternity. And if we make a priority to support our own companies that will sustain us and I know it won't even make a dent in the larger corporations like their annual revenue, but it will be enough to sustain us.

TS: 17:14

Now, here's my interview with Dom Apollon. He shares the story behind his viral tweet and why he thinks it resonated with so many people around the world, including a best selling author and a Hollywood actor.

DA: 17:25

My name is Dom Apollon, I'm a racial equity researcher and professional consultant. For about 15 years I served as the vice president of research at Race Forward, which is a national racial justice organization here in the United States, the largest national racial justice organization, and so now I conduct research for clients on evaluation services, impact planning for social and racial justice.

TS: 17:53

Okay, thank you. So, some people might know you because of a tweet. Can you tell us about that tweet, just very briefly, for people who may not be familiar.

DA: 18:05

So this was during my time at Race Forward, I actually wrote a tweet that includes some photographs of my hand with a bandage, you call them plasters in the UK, typically we call them to Band-aids here in the States. And it was a skin tone bandage, it was designed by this particular company called Tru-Colour, particularly for for darker skin tones. And it was the first time that I'd actually ever had a skin tone bandage on my hand, but actually bought it a couple of months previously, and I hadn't really thought that much of it, wanted to support it, I thought it was a novel thing. I'd never really seen one before and so I bought it, bought the box and, and I was just really moved and surprised by the emotions that came up for me when I when I saw how well it blended with my skin tone. It it actually shocked, it shocked me. I got more emotional than then certainly than I ever imagined. But just seeing the way it blended in it gave me this unfamiliar sense of belonging, of being seen and being valued. I knew that this company had taken the time to think about people, black people like me, or people again people of color with with darker skin tones. It was just such an unfamiliar feeling, this feeling of belonging.

It reminded me of of how more typically in my life in society, my skintone has has actually been, yeah, disrespected, has been undervalued, has been targeted at times whether that was in my educational experience or with police or again just in stores, shopping and feeling like I was being followed. And then more typically again just with my understanding of of how black people, my fellow Black people in the United States are treated. It's it was just a such an unfamiliar feeling this feeling of belonging that it actually made me sad as well, that it's almost like a glimpse of of a better future. What could be if if black people in general were were more included, if we had more racial, social inclusion.

TS: 20:07

And it's amazing that something so small as a plaster or a bandage can bring up such emotions, right. I think some people listening to this might be scratching their heads a little bit.

DA: 20:34

Yeah, no, absolutely. And honestly, again, I felt silly at times. And but I posted it. And I think it was an afternoon or evening, it's started getting some response, but not a lot. And I thought, Okay, I got a couple hundred hits. But yeah, I went to bed and the next morning, it had thousands and thousands of likes and retweets. It just started doing the rounds. It really resonated with folks, actually, John Boyega, the the actor posted actually about, I have no idea how it came up on on his feed. But it resonated again, particularly with women of color, black women who spoke about feeling excluded in terms of beauty products, then there were folks in Africa, who were saying, brother, like I've never seen that kind of thing, either. I think that the fact that the tweet also actually gave folks the experience that I had, because I posted two pictures, one was a bit further away, and one was a close up. And in the further away picture, you just think what is this? Why is this guy picture taking a picture of his hand, but then when you get close, you can just barely, barely see it. And again, it's just not an experience, I think that many black people really I'd say around the world had had. So they had that experience with me.

And again, for some folks, again even for some black people, they were like seriously brother, like, we got bigger things, they're bigger fish, fish to fry, than, you know, than a plaster? But again, I completely understand it. And again, as someone who's studied, researched racial justice, absolutely. For me issues of again, belonging, inclusion, this is probably number nine-hundred and seventy six on the list of most important topics. But it was just a symbol really, for me again, it was just a small symbol, but one that again, that resonated and, and I was also surprised by a lot of the white folks who posted or replied to the tweet, just feeling that wow, I never really thought about this in terms of this, this type of again, white privilege, folks thinking, educators wanting to buy them for their again for their students so that they can kids can grow up feeling again, this more included, so it's a long term process.

TS: 22:48

So you said you got comments from all over the world. Were there any in particular that that were memorable?

DA: 22:54

Yeah, I mean, certainly getting something like that, again, John Boyega. tweeting about it and saying how even on movie sets, they had to use some brown marker to color them in. Malorie Blackman, the UK based author had written that had written about it in her book, Noughts and Crosses. I actually hadn't known about that book. But there were actually other folks who were posting and saying, Hey, I remember this from again from her book.

There was there were folks in in black folks in Brazil, like I remember one person in particular, just writing about how she had felt ashamed as a kid had like how the, quote unquote flesh colored tan plasters had just called attention to the fact that she was she was, I guess, accident prone kid and having to put those on all the time. And it just gave again, jsut gave her this this sense of, of shame. So yeah, so those are some of the ones that that stand out, yeah, that stand out most to me.

TS: 23:58

At the time, were you particularly active on Twitter? Did you have lots of followers?

DA: 24:04

I didn't have that many. I'd used Twitter for the most part for conferences at Race Forward. So I had really honestly, I think it was a couple hundred, maybe over a little over a thousand followers. So I never had a tweet that had more than a couple of hundred likes. And so to get something that had at the time, it peaked over over half a million. It was quite extraordinary of an experience.

TS: 24:27

Dom says not all the comments he received were friendly, and he did get to see the ugly side of social media. But overall, he says he has no regrets.

DA: 24:35

I mean, honestly, that was one of the best things that ever did. Because it it resonated with so many folks. Social media can be cruel and ugly at times and I definitely felt that at times from this experience being the target of some some racist trolls in my either in their replies to the tweet, or indirect messages but opening the eyes of a lot of white folks and, and also just again connecting with black people honestly, again, it was around the world. So it was great to be able to help provide that platform for folks to be able to to share their experiences and be heard.

And again, for me, this particular experience was about racial exclusion and racial inclusion. But it was a broader story of, of belonging. There are other ways that people are excluded, by their their gender, or by their race and gender, for their gender expression, for for sexual orientation. There are many ways that that people are excluded or can feel included, my hope was that the tweet allows folks to just be a bit less defensive when they hear about experiences of exclusion. One thing that I really hope that folks can do, particularly white people, and like other others who aren't black, is just just take a breath, when you hear an expression of a black person or another person of color is expressing themselves and their experience of racial exclusion. I think for a lot of white people, there's just an automatic sense of defensiveness or like dismissiveness. And that happens in schools, it happens in all kinds of places at work, it happens again, in hospitals, really to the detriment of the health of black people in particular. It happens again, in in businesses and if folks could just kind of take a breath, just to calm that that defensiveness and dismissiveness, then Black people will be heard more, again, in our societies, feel more included, and we can all make better decisions, honestly.

And there are ways I think, again, that white people in particular can help make more space for for black people, again, whether it's in your church, whether it's in your schools, in your businesses, wherever it is, by backing us up, in allowing us to have the space to share, by also taking your white colleagues, your fellow white colleagues aside, and having one on one, again, conversations with them. Again, that's how we're going to help long term just create societies that are far more racially inclusive, far more just racially equitable for all of us.

TS: 27:33

So as you probably know, Tesco which is one of the big supermarket chains, in the UK, they released plasters in three different skin tones, I believe it was in twenty-twenty. And they actually said that your tweet was the inspiration for that. I guess you're aware of that, like, what did you What did you think when you first heard about that?

DA: 27:54

I was, I was chuffed to bits. So I would say I was really happy to see that. I know they had an ad campaign. I think I remember something like it's about bloody time or there was they had some funny, funny commercials, they used some comedians as well. So they were having some fun with it as well. I was again really pleased to see it. It took a lot longer. I think again, here in the States. It was really actually even after George Floyd's murder that that that Johnson and Johnson, the company that makes the most popular product here in the United States, started to create some products again, some skintone products. So yeah, it was again very, very happy to see that see that impact.

But there's there's so many other ways again, it is as others as posted posted on in the tweet thread of of this anti blackness, including like skin bleaching products that are used in places and again in Africa, they're used here in the again in the United States by some as well in parts of Asia. And so there's there's still this anti blackness in so many of our products. I can remember I think there was there was a UK based obstetrician, black woman obstetrician who wrote a an opinion piece about the pharmaceutical industry and how the pharmaceutical industry is really racially exclusive, does not often think about people of color in terms of its products and she was saying she had patients, black women who didn't feel comfortable wearing a birth control patch that was again quote unquote flesh toned, that didn't match the color of their skin. And they didn't want to be caught necessarily calling attention to the fact that they were on birth control whether it was for their their partners in or others. There are hearing aids as well. I can remember actually there was a my, my children's after school care program. There was one of the staffers there was was from Thailand and she had an uncle who was a darker skin tone she she told me when she saw the tweet, she said, Yeah, my my uncle, like didn't want to really wear his his hearing aid because like, it's not in his his, again his skin tone, and it really is being called attention to. Um, there are, again, other, like, again, pharmaceutical patches that, that, that, um, you know, again, are, are not designed, again, for, again, for, for people of color. And so, so much more to be done. And again, happy that the, the tweet was, was, was a platform for, uh, for, for this expression.

TS: 30:30

Thank you to Intisar Bashir and Dom Apollon. You can head to the show notes if you'd like to learn more. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. Thanks for joining me on Made For Us.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai