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" I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to go to college in the United States. By the time I graduated, we had a full-blown civil war in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. I couldn't go home. "
Richelieu Dennis
Enough
Time
War
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" Our love of people has always been our motivation and our competitive advantage. "
Richelieu Dennis
Always
People
Motivation
" My grandmother was a single mother. My mother's a single mother, and I have four daughters. I've experienced firsthand the challenges of what it is to be a single mother. And many of those challenges are challenges that, if we all just got together and worked together and thought about it together, we could help solve. "
Richelieu Dennis
Challenges
Mother
Together
" While we have been presented several opportunities to be acquired by multinational corporations, we are most excited that our collaboration with Bain Capital fulfills our commitment to remain an independent family-owned and operated company with a purpose-driven business model that puts community at our core. "
Richelieu Dennis
Community
Business
Commitment
" As our company grew and we began growing our family stateside - with heritages ranging from Liberian and Sierra Leonean to Irish, Indian, Swedish, Filipino, German, and beyond - our different cultural influences and walks of life helped us even better understand the criticality of an inclusive point of view. "
Richelieu Dennis
Growing
Better
View
" We were presented with limited opportunities to get distribution when we went to retail, so we made the hard decision to build the brand and win the community first. "
Richelieu Dennis
Opportunities
Win
Decision
" We understand that we, as a brand, have transcended a brand, and we are part of our cultural identity, and there's a responsibility that comes with that. "
Richelieu Dennis
Responsibility
Our
Identity
" There's no need for women and moms to go through this world alone without the help and the support from the businesses that do business in our communities and that generate success from the women in our community. That should not be happening. "
Richelieu Dennis
Success
Community
Go
" We started our company out of a need to survive, but we've built it based on a mission not only to help others survive but to prosper. In fact, we view ourselves as a mission with a business, rather than a business with a mission. "
Richelieu Dennis
View
Business
Help
" Like so many women aspiring and working to create the life they desire, Madam Walker lived with a vision that was beyond her time - a vision for the way that things could be, not the way they were. "
Richelieu Dennis
Women
Way
Vision
" As a kid growing up, one of the brands I thought was tremendous was Karl Kani... and I don't see Karl Kani today. I want to see SheaMoisture tomorrow. "
Richelieu Dennis
Up
Thought
Growing Up
" I am proud of all of our products across every category we're in - hair, bath and body, face, cosmetics, baby, and men's - because they reflect the highest quality natural, organic, fair trade, and community commerce-sourced ingredients available. "
Richelieu Dennis
Community
Quality
Men
" We want women to have options and not be forced into somebody else's idea of what their beauty needs ought to be. "
Richelieu Dennis
Beauty
Options
Somebody
" I was born and raised in Liberia in West Africa. My mother is Sierra Leonean, and my father's Liberian. I grew up at a time when there was a lot of civil unrest in both countries, so when something would happen in Liberia, we'd go to Sierra Leone, and when something would happen in Sierra Leone, we'd go back to Liberia. We moved to save our lives. "
Richelieu Dennis
Time
Back
Africa
" I've always wanted Sundial Brands to be an inspiration to other minority-owned companies of how a business against all odds can achieve excellence, have significant social impact in our communities, and be successful on a world stage. "
Richelieu Dennis
World
Impact
Excellence
" A critical lesson I learned is that we have to make sure all our employees, particularly new hires, have a full immersion in our culture. "
Richelieu Dennis
Lesson
Employees
Culture
" When you're doing something that hasn't been done before, and you're trying to build something that hasn't been built before on a platform that hasn't existed before, you are going to make mistakes. The biggest advice that I can give is to not run away from issues when they occur. Own it. Your consumers deserve that. "
Richelieu Dennis
Done
Doing
Advice
" Once a company develops out of its consumer base, you will often see a well-funded multinational company come in and take over that space. The black-owned company either stays a niche company or just disappears. This is something we don't want to happen. "
Richelieu Dennis
Company
Will
You
" This natural-hair movement has opened up the door for us to do so many things, for us to have conversations that we weren't able to have. We need this in our communities. "
Richelieu Dennis
Movement
Need
Things
" I am excited Sundial and Unilever have created this partnership, rooted in a purpose-driven ethos, that represents an incredible opportunity to take our Community Commerce economic empowerment and impact model to another level. "
Richelieu Dennis
Opportunity
Impact
I Am
" There's something about 'Essence' that we more than like - that we really love: the history of the community, the forward-thinking leadership. "
Richelieu Dennis
Love
Leadership
History
" The ability to forget is a prerequisite for an entrepreneur. "
Richelieu Dennis
Ability
Entrepreneur
Forget
" Our mission is to serve women of color and serve them deeply. "
Richelieu Dennis
Our
Mission
Color
" My father ran an insurance company, but he passed away when I was 8. My mother was an economist working for the government of Liberia. But both my grandmothers were entrepreneurs in rural West Africa. "
Richelieu Dennis
Father
Mother
Insurance
" By questioning the very concept of a normal standard, especially as it applies to beauty and to hair type or texture, we can begin to see how arbitrary, narrow, and potentially destructive it is and course-correct ourselves on a path to where everybody gets love. "
Richelieu Dennis
Beauty
Hair
Love
" My mother, Mary, has been a guiding force for as long as I can remember through the examples she's set as a single mother. She demonstrated her confidence and faith in me by investing everything in me and the business at a time when she had just lost everything. "
Richelieu Dennis
Business
Mother
Faith
" We began Sundial Brands as young entrepreneurs, and as we move forward towards our goal of becoming the number one global family company serving our communities in a way that is aligned with their needs and our core values, we will always be entrepreneurs. "
Richelieu Dennis
Values
Company
Goal
" We need to be able to express ourselves and to show the world who we are and how we are. "
Richelieu Dennis
Ourselves
World
Who
" One of the hardest things to do is to get capital. That's where we, as black business, struggles. And the other place we struggle is scale, and because we don't have an access to capital, we cannot scale. "
Richelieu Dennis
Business
Struggle
Place
" You could say I was born into entrepreneurship. My grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries and villagers. "
Richelieu Dennis
Support
Care
Children
" I'm very focused on giving back, investing, and growing my community. "
Richelieu Dennis
Growing
Giving Back
Community