For our last success story of 2021, we’re catching up with the brilliant April Showers, first featured on our blog mid this year. April showed us how she grew her brand, Afro Unicorn, and developed a strong community around it. Since then, April has achieved what many can only dream of: A brand partnership with Walmart, the largest retailer in the USA!

As a merchandise and clothing brand, April created Afro Unicorn to empower and inspire women of color to pursue business opportunities. Having Afro Unicorn products on the shelves of such a massive company as Walmart is an enormous cause for celebration for us all. It’s also a significant win for a community-based brand focused on representation and pride in one’s identity.

Hi April, welcome back. Tell us how afro unicorn has evolved since our last chat?

“Since then, I have continued to develop the Afro Unicorn brand. I’m happy to report that I’m now the first Black-woman-owned business to enter into the party supplies in a significant retail store! To put it into perspective, Afro Unicorn is now sitting alongside Mickey Mouse, Finding Nemo, and Elsa from Frozen from the mega-brand Disney! That gives me pause with gratitude.

I always wanted Afro Unicorn to be a household name. But I didn’t think I’d get there without selling the business. In the end, I discovered I am really a unicorn with Black girl magic, and I got it figured out.”

In our last interview, we learned that April created Afro Unicorn to address a lack of representation for WOC. But the brand developed into a strong community with a clear vision of empowering women of color to start their own businesses. To that end, April was keen to build Afro Unicorn slowly while shining a spotlight on small business owners and promoting their ventures.

What has been the most significant investment into Afro Unicorn?

“Time has definitely been the biggest investment. A few of my colleagues like to joke that I prefer a slow marketing style. I prefer to do organic marketing versus paid adverts to get the products seen.

When you do organic marketing, it helps to leave a longer-lasting legacy, whereas paid ads only work for the duration of the campaign. I spent hours searching through Instagram to find ideal customers to let them know about the brand. I’d message them and say things like, ‘I see you describe yourself as a Black unicorn, well I have a brand called Afro Unicorn!’

I’m convinced that I single-handedly created the trend of adults wearing unicorn clothing. Organic marketing is cheaper, but you have to put in a considerable amount of time, so of course, I understand that I’m still spending money in a way.”

With so much time devoted to marketing and a dramatic surge in popularity, April has had a busy year. Yet she’s managed to find time to raise a family and involves her children in the business:

“I didn’t want to give up time with my children, so I invited them into the business. My 15-year-old son Jessie is now my right-hand man. He does so much to help keep things running smoothly. He booked all of the travel for an upcoming Walmart strategy meeting and helped complete orders before he went to school. He’s been an enormous blessing to me.

I always made sure that I scheduled quarterly trips to celebrate our wins. We missed out on a few outings and didn’t eat out as often the last two years, but so was everyone. The self-isolation allowed us to focus and removed lots of distractions to grow the brand.”

The viral video that changed everything

Thanks to the countless hours spent on Instagram outreach, Afro Unicorn grew in size and popularity. The value of such an enthusiastic community became clear when a video of a little black girl wearing an Afro Unicorn t-shirt went viral:

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A post shared by Kid Influencer and Brand Rep (@cassidy_brianna)

The mother of Cassidy Brianna, a kid influencer on Instagram, shot a video of her daughter. Cassidy was wearing an Afro Unicorn t-shirt when she said the now memorable words “It’s an Afro” in response to a compliment about her hair. The clip went viral with celebrities such as Viola Davies, Tina Knowles, and Oprah Winfrey sharing the clip. The Afro Unicorn community flooded the comment sections tagging Afro Unicorn, and soon after, Walmart reached out asking to post it in their IG stories.

April: “It was my community that got Afro Unicorn into Walmart in the first place.”

After the Instagram video went viral, April received an email with an enticing subject line: ‘Afro Unicorn X Walmart Collaboration.’ Thrilled at the prospect, she quickly set up a meeting.”

Afro Unicorn X Walmart:
The record-breaking collaboration

“I set up a Zoom call, which ended up being scheduled for 6:30 in the morning, as Walmart was on central time. I ended up taking the call on my laptop in my bedroom. The representative told me that she was in the party supply category and loved my brand. I’d written down a goal that I would have an Afro Unicorn stuffed animal and party supply products, so that was amazing to hear.

I’d always wanted to create party supply products such as wrapping paper, plates, and napkins. But it’s so expensive sourcing it yourself, so I’d always presumed that the only way I’d be able to achieve my goals would be to sell the brand to a corporation. Walmart told me that they had manufacturers that worked with licensed brands and could get Afro Unicorn products into stores. I began working with a new business manager, Askia Fountain, who pointed out that many big brands like the Ninja Turtles and He-Man became household names once they made toys under license.”

Luckily, April had the foresight to trademark and copyright Afro Unicorn in February 2019. That meant the only thing left to do was convince Walmart’s marketing department that she could grow the brand.

April the unicorn prepares the perfect pitch

In April’s eyes, nothing on the shelves in major retail stores stood for representation and pride in black identity. The idea of getting Afro Unicorn onto the shelves of Walmart was enough to make her cry. But first, she’d have to make a killer presentation to wow the Walmart marketing executives.

“They wanted to see a presentation to learn more about how I was going to market my brand effectively. I think the manufacturers were skeptical about whether I could pull it off. As black women, we know this feeling all too well. I was about to prove my case.

I’m not very technical, especially with Canva and other presentation tools, but I am a self-proclaimed Unicorn, so I figure it out. With the help of Kalea of KSW Social Media, I put together a marketing presentation and set up a meeting.

I felt like my whole identity was being questioned, so I put a tremendous amount of effort into the presentation, which in the end, blew everyone away. They told me that they’d never seen anything like it before, and that included big brands like Disney and Nickelodeon.”

April’s vision comes full circle

Afro Unicorn started as a platform for representation and inspiration. April held conferences where women could pitch ideas to investors and entrepreneurs. But she never dreamt that she’d be pitching her own brand to the likes of Walmart. Although it’s a dream come true, April has always believed that anyone can realize their goals.

“When I first started Afro Unicorn, I had a pre-launch party with some of my closest friends. I used to use the line ‘if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring your own folding chair.’ So we literally had a party sitting at a table with folding chairs. The fact that Walmart made room for Afro Unicorn at the table means everything has come full circle.

“I haven’t made any official posts about Walmart, as we’re not in stores until May 2022, but the community knows about it. They’re elated, and it affirms for them that anyone can achieve their dreams.”

After the presentation, April began the process of product development. In a few short months, she was able to take Afro Unicorn from an eCommerce hustle to the shelves of the USA’s largest retailer:

“After I’d set calls with a couple of manufacturers, we were able to develop an amazing line of party stuff. We designed napkins, balloons, tablecloths, mugs, lip glosses, and plush toys. It’s amazing to see and live it.”

The journey to Walmart stores begins

“Walmart has a mockup store in Arkansas, where they add products to the shelves to see how they will look in real stores. Afro Unicorn went through that process and got accepted, then other departments saw the products and wanted their own items. I now have two shirts and two sets of pants going into the children’s section, as well as Christmas wrapping paper and a full line of color-changing mugs. Overall, we’re now in four Walmart categories!”

A steep learning curve

Now the dust has settled and the Walmart partnership has been finalized, April is delighted. However, she’s aware of the challenging journey that lays ahead:

“Afro Unicorn is going into over 3,800 Walmart stores, out of a total of 4,000. So we’re going nationwide, including Puerto Rico. That’s huge, and I’m excited, but on the flip side, I’m no longer an eCommerce seller; this is a brick-and-mortar retail store. I now have to shift gears from the online mindset and figure out how to get people into the stores. To that end, I’ve had to build a team to strategize, brainstorm and help me create a strategic plan.

If you don’t feel a little bit of fear and hesitation, you’re not going in the right direction. I feel a lot of pressure, but it’s still wonderful to be able to do all this. The fact that I’m the first Black woman doing this means that I represent not just Afro Unicorn, but the entire culture behind it. All my packaging says, ‘Afro Unicorn, because representation matters. Woman-owned. Black-owned.’ That’s going to end up on the shelves of Walmart, and I love it.”

The future for Afro Unicorn

Afro-Unicorn x Walmart products will hit the shelves in 2022. And that’s just the beginning. April plans to get the Afro Unicorn brand into homes across the USA.

“I still hope for the brand to be a household name. Next for Afro unicorn is books and hopefully an animated TV series. If you think about Mickey Mouse or Elsa, I’m the only brand without an accompanying story. So there will be an animation and storybooks in the works.”

And if April achieves her goals, would she ever be tempted to sell her trademarked brand?

“I always want to be the majority owner of my brand. At first, I thought I’d have to sell the Afro Unicorn name, but now I know I don’t need to. I want it to sustain my family forever, with the name April Showers still attached to the brand.”

“Stay driven, stay focused, and believe in yourself.”

With worldwide success firmly in April’s hands, she has this to say:

“I put in so many hours, and I didn’t allow anyone who couldn’t see my vision to hinder me. I realized from the beginning that the vision I had was meant for me alone. The glasses that I see through are my prescription and don’t belong to anyone else.

I’m also a firm believer that you must write everything down. You need to confirm what you’re thinking inside your head. Anything is possible if you believe it, write it down, and execute it.”

Let’s all congratulate April Showers on her tremendous achievement by supporting her and showing out for her Walmart collaboration. Please follow Afro Unicorn on Instagram, Facebook, her web-store, and across social media. Keep repping Afro Unicorn from wherever you are. Don’t miss the biggest drop of 2022!

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April Showers, a California native with roots in Monroe, Louisiana, remembers her childhood fondly, especially her visits to grandma every summer. Today, she lives in Los Angeles with her two sons, Jessie and Christopher, ages 14 and 10. “They are my two bright, beautiful, smart, and intelligent black boys,” she remarks, beaming with pride. It is easy to fall in love with April’s presence, “I think spending time down south allowed me to have the hospitality side mixed in with me being a California girl.” Perhaps it is why she has successfully managed to build a strong community for her brand, Afro Unicorn.

Sitting with her for an hour flew by as we spoke about her brand, career, and how to build a strong community online. “I started in the music industry, working on music in motion pictures. That is where I met singers and later started managing artists. But it doesn’t pay as much to be in the industry. So I left and got a job in real estate. I later opened my insurance agency, which I still run to date. I’m approaching my ninth year as an insurance business owner.” 

April is the ideal candidate to talk to for any young entrepreneur who wants to start a long-term brand with trademarked designs and a strong customer base. We talked extensively about entrepreneurship, print on demand, and building her brand, Afro Unicorn.

Let’s hear from April as she shares her story, from trademarking her designs and building a brand to how she has built a network of support and community.

eCommerce is the future, and I wanted to be in it

I have always been very entrepreneurial and had my two businesses, but I wanted something tangible, which I could own. In real estate, the business is very transactional, and as an insurance agent, the business model is not a real franchise; I am an independent contractor. One day, I came across an article titled “a better lemonade stand.” In the article, they talked about opening a T-shirt brand in less than 24 hours. 

The premise immediately sparked my interest. The article gave links to print on demand companies like Printify, Shopify, and WordPress. Still, the key message was you should never rely on only one entity to dictate your livelihood. The best way to go about business today is by owning an eCommerce business. From that moment on, I set on owning an eCommerce business, and that’s why I started Afro Unicorn.

Finding my unicorn, the inspiration for my brand

A friend of mine kept referring to me as a unicorn. He said it was because I was balancing a lot in my life – my two business ventures, children, and personal life – in a way he considered very motivating and strong. He would say this a lot, but it didn’t resonate with me because I’ve never considered myself what someone would call a “girly-girl.” I thought to be an actual unicorn, you had to be the “typical girly princess.” But then again, I was juggling so much, and if that’s what it takes, then yeah, I’m definitely a unicorn. And so are many women living like me, being unicorns themselves. So I started using the unicorn emoji a lot on my phone. 

But one thing that always bothered me was that the only unicorn emoji available was white. Representation matters to me, and this unicorn did not represent who I was. So I reached out to a graphic artist and asked him to create a unicorn of my likeness. One notable thing he did was he gave me designs on unicorns in different shades. I went, wait a minute, we come in all different shades of melanin, and I’m not the only unicorn. There are other unicorns that want to be seen. I just needed to let them know and bring them into the circle.

How to build a strong community with a clear message

From the get-go, the most important thing was to spend the time to build the brand before I opened the store. I was very cautious of the legalities of coming up with something that didn’t exist. Some copiers are going to try to copy your design and your style. I wanted to protect my brand through a trademark and copyright legally. I filed for a trademark in February 2019, and after many revisions, I got approved in October 2020. It took a while, but as long as it was filed as a pending trademark, I had legal protection to build my brand.

I then made sure to build my brand with a strong message and learned how to build a strong online community. This would give ownership and meaning to the brand. So that if someone saw it at the local flea market selling my brand, they would instantly recognize it as counterfeit because they know Afro Unicorn and what it stands for. I call it putting weight on your brand. Because when you have weight on the brand, people can’t just pick it up and run away with it. 

Afro Unicorn is a strong community of women entrepreneurs, trying to create multiple streams of income. It stands for independence and that we can do it all without relying on one source of income to dictate our livelihood. We are Afro Unicorns. Now, if a celebrity wears my shirt on TikTok, the comments all say, “that’s Afro Unicorn.” That’s because we build the brand and not just an online store.

Putting some weight on my brand to build a community

What’s great about a community-based brand is that I get to know the women wearing my shirt. I built my brand on social media through Instagram by first spotlighting the women within my circle, highlighting the gifts and talents I saw in them. I intended to build a strong community of women who supported and promoted each other’s businesses. 

When I had my launch event, I took pictures of all the ladies in the Afro Unicorn brand and posted them. It quickly caught on that if a small business wore my brand on social media, I would spotlight their brand on my page. It has now grown into a strong online community of women who acknowledge and support each other. The network has now grown to an even younger audience, including kids. Last week, I hosted a young CEO forum with kids as young as 7 to 11 that have small businesses that they’re doing right now. And I call them my Afro Unicorns in Training.

Finding my place in POD and opening my online store

When I opened my store with print on demand, I originally went with a competitor. But when they sent me my Afro Unicorn shirt, the color was so off the unicorn was orange. My brand is about representation. I am very adamant that these unicorns’ colors come in different shades – the correct shades – and orange is not one of them. When I got that shirt, I was so disappointed because I knew I wanted to go into print on demand, but it made me feel like I couldn’t. 

So I pulled back from POD and sourced a screen printer to do my shirts in the correct shades. It wasn’t until the guy that helped me navigate setting up my shop found Printify. He started selling accessories through Printify, and I later joined in. I started with just a couple of notebooks and mugs and bags, and those items came out so beautifully.

Actively empowering my online community

We launched Afro Unicorn with a clear mission; To empower women of color to pursue different business opportunities available to them, whether it was a small eCommerce store or owning Chick Fil A or McDonald’s. I use the platform I have with my online community to give them advice and to guide them. I initially wanted to start holding conferences where women would have the opportunity to pitch their businesses to potential women investors and entrepreneurs. When the pandemic hit, I moved this initiative online with a series we call “ Small Business Saturdays.” 

Every Saturday at six o’clock in the morning on my Instagram page, I ask anyone in my community with small businesses to tag me in a post with their business information. I then reshare these stories or posts on my stories. We get flooded with at least 100 businesses every single Saturday. I meet them two hours later on live, where I typically bring on a guest, and we discuss a topic related to business, such as financing, marketing, and even self-care. People want more, so I’m currently in the process of developing two ebooks. One is to teach people how to start their brands organically from scratch. The second is how to get influencers to promote your brand for free.

Getting celebrity endorsements for free

I was still using a screen printer for my t-shirt when I caught the attention of the celebrity Tiffany Haddish. I sent her a comment on her Instagram post and said, “Hey, have you ever seen an Afro Unicorn before? I created a brand for women of color who hustle. Follow the movement”. To my surprise, she wrote back to that comment, and she said, “If you make me one with a silver horn, I’m gonna rock the hell out of it. Here’s my address.” It blew up! Within an hour, it had over 10,000 likes. She had included her address, so everyone was replying to her, promising to send her their stuff. I thought she would never find my shirt, but she did. Since then, she has worn my Afro Unicorn shirts on many casual occasions along with other celebrity figures such as Sherri Shepherd and Kym Whitley.

Finding the right partner and overcoming business challenges

What happened when Tiffany wore my brand was everyone rushed over to my store on Shopify. But I had no inventory because I was using my screen-printer. I didn’t have enough items, which was not good for business when I had successfully driven so much demand to my store. That’s when I decided to try out Printify for my t-shirts. I quickly ordered samples to make sure they looked great. And that’s how I started selling entirely with Printify. The lesson I learned was that for my brand to be successful, I should never be in such a position again. With Printify, I made sure I never run out of inventory.

I have come to really appreciate working with Printify on my brand. Afro Unicorn was only supposed to be my design on a white shirt in three different shades. But now that my brand has grown, the challenge is keeping up with the demand of what people want.  I get several requests a day asking me if I can put the Afro Unicorn design on a different item. Thankfully, Printify has helped me do that, and we now have over 150 items in the store. 

The other day, I got a request saying, “can you please do a duffel bag because my daughter is now in swim class, but backpacks don’t have enough room.” As we speak, I’m working on including duffle bags in my store, just like that. Printify allows me to give my consumers what they want. I have a brand with a beautiful, unique, and magical message. It makes me proud that I not only figured out how to build a strong online community but now I can offer the products the community really wants. 

Becoming a true CEO with Printify

When I was running my business alone, I spent most of my time fulfilling orders and printing shirts. I didn’t have a lot of time to put on marketing strategies or time to follow up with customers. There was barely enough time to engage on social media or to figure out how to build a strong online community. I was stressed out, and it was taking the fun out of running my business. But with Printify, I have a lot more time to work on other aspects of the company and build my community. If there’s an issue with an order, I can reach out to the Printify team to resolve it.

I like that I can be the CEO of my business and manage it while the fulfillment aspect is well taken care of through Printify. Recently Printify added two features that I like because they make it even easier on me. The order routing feature and, my personal best,  the new Out Of Stock feature. It was a feature I desperately needed because now I can make adjustments to my store beforehand to avoid disappointing my customers.

Push through – my advice to fellow entrepreneurs.

Nurture your customers – I can’t express that enough. Follow up and follow through. Put systems in place where you can engage with your customers.  That is the only way I know how to build a strong community online. Many of my customers thank me for the simple thank you note that I send them. Always keep learning to find a groove and because things are ever-changing, make sure that you stay ahead of the curve. Build a network with other like-minded people. You don’t always have to be the only person driving your brand, have other people around you. Find the people in your circle that you can bounce things off to get different perspectives and ideas.

Are you a small business owner?
Join April for Small Business Saturday live on Instagram.
Instagram page: @afrounicorn_official
Shop Afro Unicorn: afrounicorns.com

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