Textured hair care brand, Bread Beauty Supply, just found a new home with Cost of Doing Business (CODB). This brand new holding company was founded by Topicals CEO Olamide Olowe and president Sochi Mbadugha, who are also now Bread’s new strategic advisors. From Topicals’s clever brand films to Bread’s cheeky branding, like their trademarked scalp massager, “scalp-thingy,” the acquisition is one that makes total sense—especially as one of CODB’s first.
“Typically when a Black-owned business gets acquired, so many things are changed and altered in a way that isn’t serving our community,” Olowe tells ESSENCE exclusively. That’s why, for Bread founder Maeva Heim, being acquired by another Black business is the point. “They understand what it takes to build a generational defining brand in this market and I can’t wait to see where they want to take the brand,” Heim says. Remaining the brand’s Chief Creative Officer (CCO), “they say it takes a village to raise a child, and it’s really the same for business.”
Although, Topicals and CODB will operate independently, Bread has already begun following in the skincare line’s footsteps by launching their first-ever brand film, A Love Like Ours, yesterday. The sultry video features music artist Foggieraw and muse Solela Malila. And—with moody lighting and the rapper’s single, “Stay Awhile,” featuring Ari Lennox—as Heim said in the comment section, this iconic moment marks a new chapter for the brand that is “all grown up.” In other words, what’s to come is worth waiting for.
Below, from give-back initiatives to re-investing into the creative community, read on for Heim, Olowe, and Mbadugha’s exclusive insight on why this acquisition is a strategic play, CODB’s vision for the future, and what this means for Black beauty as a whole.
ESSENCE: Tell us more about your new firm, CODB, that acquired Bread!
OLAMIDE OLOWE: Along with Sochi, the president at Topicals, I co-founded this holding company to acquire and launch businesses that we feel like are at the center of culture and commerce in any and every category. We’re pros in beauty, so obviously beauty was the first category we wanted to start with—just because the opportunity came and we have the experience. But we’re really excited to build a new-age holding company.
ESSENCE: Where did that idea bloom from and when were you like, “this is right, we need to do this”?
SOCHI MBADUGHA: Maeva’s been a friend of the brand for a long time. Even within my first year at Topicals, like 2021, we started trading tips and advice on what we’ve been seeing and how we’re scaling our businesses. I remember Olamide and I had a conversation [saying how we] wish we could run Bread the way we run Topicals.
There’s just so many different types of financial institutions and ways of setting this up. What would it take if we wanted to acquire this company? We’d explored a lot of different options, but after talking with our previous CFO who has a lot of experience working with different types of startups and orgs, the holding company just made the most sense and kept it separate from Topicals as well so we can let it live on its own.
MAEVA HEIM: Both Olamide and Sochi are equal parts strategic and visionary, and it truly feels like we couldn’t have found a better home for the brand. They understand what it takes to build a generational-defining brand in this market and I can’t wait to see where they want to take the brand.
It’s just powerful to see Black women doing this and acquiring other amazing, incredible Black-owned beauty brands. This is historical. What’s your vision for the holding company, but also Bread specifically?
OO: We want to take it one day at a time. We know what it’s like to build a business from scratch and we did this with our own money. We really have a focus and commitment to Bread to make sure that it becomes a household name in the way that Topicals has.
SM: We think about building businesses that are led by Black and Brown people. Just because it’s a Black-owned business doesn’t mean it’s necessarily just for Black people. We want to give these businesses the opportunity to really shine on a cross-cultural stage. And, that’s about transcending culture and us delivering that value to other people, but making sure that our community is at the foundation of it all. We’re serving their needs first. Something we always say at Topicals is, when you’re serving marginalized communities, you create products that work better for everybody.
OO: We want to keep employing people who want to do that in our community. Typically when a Black-owned business gets acquired, so many things are changed and altered in a way that isn’t serving our community. We’re happy to partner with people earlier on because we know that a lot of our founders don’t have the access to resources that would allow them to grow into that larger business. The resources and access that Sochi and I have access to, we’re going to share that with any and everyone that aligns with our mission.
What’s been the greatest lesson for you so far as an entrepreneur?
MH: They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it’s really the same for business. Having the right people around you and building with you is the biggest unlock you can make, and it’s not always easy to find the right people at the right time. As fulfilling as entrepreneurship is, it’s also one of the most challenging things you can put yourself through. When people say it’s hard, trust them, they mean it.
You mentioned not just wanting to tap into just the beauty sphere. Eventually we are probably going to see you tap into other areas. So I’m curious, do you have one that you’re most excited about branching into next?
OO: We do, but we won’t say anything. We really want to make sure that [Bread] is successful and we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew because again, even if you look at Topicals, you’ve seen the success there, but we’ve raised a 10th of what other beauty brands have raised to become that successful.
Even though we’re successful, we got a lot of ‘no’s’. Even when we were fundraising for this holding company, we got mostly ‘no’s’ actually. To still be getting those, we can’t imagine what other founders are seeing. And so for us, we still have to make sure that the businesses are operating profitably.
Sochi has mandated that when we acquire these businesses, we should see a line of sight to profitability or breaking even within the first year. We’re very strict about this, Topicals is a breakeven profitable business. We haven’t raised capital in a few years because we are sustainably building the brand and we want to continue to do that with these other brands.
ESSENCE: Do you have any upcoming plans that we can expect from Bread that you want to share?
MH: There are so many exciting things in the pipeline, but one of the things I’m most excited about is the introduction of our new give-back initiative ‘Everybody Eats’. We’ll be pledging support to food banks as well as grants for creative endeavors for our community – something I’ve always envisioned happening for the brand that we finally will be able to implement. In addition, being able to stay on in a creative capacity is really exciting. It means I get to focus on the function that I thrive in, and spend more time driving exciting product innovations.
OO: We believe 2025 is the year of the pixie. We’re giving away a hundred free pixie transformations. If you want to cut your hair or you want to get an undetectable pixie wig, we are going to fund you doing that as long as you use Bread products. We want to see content with you using the Bread products, but we’re going to fund a hundred United States to start, but Bread is also available in the UK and Australia. We’re going to work our way there, but in a few days we’re going to announce this, but y’all have this scoop a hundred transformations in the US.
You’re all so busy. We’re curious, what does self-care look like for each of you?
OO: Sochi called me earlier today cause we were running through a couple of deals. We were just talking and I was laughing and I was like, ‘my life is made’ Because at that time I was sitting in the chair getting this hair sewn in. I love being a Black woman and being able to close multi-million dollar deals and be sitting in the chair at two o’clock getting sewn.
My life feels like a dream because I get to be my full self without feeling like I have to call out of work for my hair. I get to be a Black woman fully, and I think that’s only because of the people who’ve come before me who’ve given me the confidence to do this—brands and founders like the SheaMoisture founders and magazines like ESSENCE! I started my career at SheaMoisture, which is why ESSENCE has my heart. I grew up reading the magazine. That’s where I saw representations of myself and what I could be.
SM: Self-care time really is possible because of working with such passionate, talented women. I know when Topicals was much smaller, there was less balance because my mind was always having to be stretched across so many different areas. Now, I can take time off from work and not worry that the business is going to blow up because we have such a great team and Olamide has always been such an advocate of taking time away because that’s what fuels creativity. Just being able to press pause, get a change of scenery, download a new perspective, and then bring it back, refresh. So self-care for me is unapologetically taking time away to just turn my brain off so when my brain is on, it can really be on.
MH: This is super important for me right now and for this next chapter. I don’t envision things slowing down, but I do know that I’ll be focused on maintaining and nurturing my health (both mind and body). Being a solo entrepreneur can have an immense toll, and I know many founders struggling in silence behind the scenes. I’m getting out in the fresh air (rather than being bound to my laptop 24/7), taking my dogs to the beach, and I’ve taken up ballet classes to make sure my body is moving more than it has been the last 5 years.
