Earlier this week, Anifa Mvuemba, whose brand Hanifa turned 3D digital fashion shows into viral cultural events and put vibrant, curve‑hugging knits on the map, announced that she was hitting pause on production.

Mvuemba was transparent about her decision, sharing that it was less a dramatic shutdown than a survival tactic — a choice to step back from relentless production, honor existing orders, and protect her sanity after trying to scale a small team to meet huge demand. The founder also talked openly about manufacturing issues colliding with a rush of orders and the emotional toll of learning in public, while customers dragged the brand on social media.

Mvuemba’s news came just weeks after Pat McGrath announced that her Pat McGrath Labs cosmetics company, which was once valued at around a billion dollars, is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and restructuring its debt in court.

Although the “unicorn” brand that secured roughly 30 million dollars in new financing and will keep operating, the control is shifting: McGrath is moving from CEO to chief creative officer while her lender takes a controlling stake.

That means one of the most influential makeup artists alive is still the creative engine — but someone else is now effectively driving her namesake brand.

McGrath’s and Mvuemba’s stories aren’t isolated or part of an “oops, bad management” moment; it sits in a pattern that’s hard to ignore.

Last June, Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, founder of Ami Colé, a clean makeup brand that centered on Black women, announced the closure of her business. The news came as a shock to many, as the brand was so beloved. Ami Colé managed to cut through the barrage of cheap beauty products being hawked on TikTok shops, slowly becoming a favorite brand among the app’s users. Sadly, that wasn’t enough: the brand officially closed in September.

“Instead of focusing on the healthy, sustainable future of the company and meeting the needs of our loyal fan base, I rode a temperamental wave of appraising investors — some of whom seemed to have an attitude toward equity and “betting big on inclusivity” that changed its tune a lot, to my ears, from what it sounded like in 2020,” N’Diaye-Mbaye wrote in an open letter published by The Cut about her decision.

There’s also Uncle Nearest, the whiskey and bourbon brand owned by Fawn Weaver, which has been making headlines due to reportedly being in millions of dollars in debt.

And Pinky Cole of the Slutty Vegan restaurant chain recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Court documents indicate that $1.2 million is owed to the Small Business Administration and $192,000 is owed in state taxes.

Over the years, these businesses have become pillars in our community, not just for the products they sell but for the inspiration they yield.

Black women founders have been sold a story: if you’re excellent and if your brand is “authentic” and digestible on social media, then the capital will come. But McGrath’s restructuring shows that even her iconic cultural legacy doesn’t guarantee long‑term control when your company is leveraged and the market shifts.

These stories matter. They’re live case studies in what support for Black women looks like when the hashtags fade and when the realities of investor demands settle in.

In 2020, it seemed like we’d finally turned a corner after an outpouring of corporate support for Black-owned businesses, following a year of racial reckoning. Though we know that support was performative and very short-lived.

In 2023, the American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the Fearless Fund and its foundation over the Strivers Grant, alleging it was "racially discriminatory" against non-Black business owners.

The Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm, shuttered its grant program for Black women as part of a settlement.

There’s also the elephant in the room: the Trump administration. Particularly, its aggressive rollback of DEI programs. Not to mention: tariffs.

In this climate, Black women founders are expected to be both symbols and shock absorbers. And Black founders are expected to fix decades of exclusion in corporate leadership, while also carrying the risk of thin margins, delayed investors, glitchy supply chains, and unreliable algorithms.

When they stumble, the reaction can be brutal — Hanifa’s shipping drama turned into a pile‑on, when it should’ve ignited conversations about what it means to scale a small Black‑owned fashion company without the backend muscle of a conglomerate.

Women’s History Month often celebrates the “firsts” — the first Black woman to do X, and the first Black woman CEO in Y industry. But the stories we’re witnessing right now are about what happens after the first headline; after the profile, after the award, after the viral moment, when the founder is still a human being trying to make payroll and sleep a full night.

“I just want people to support Black-owned businesses as hard as they were in 2021 and 2022,” said Necole Kane to Forbes. Kane is the founder and CEO of My Happy Flo, but many also know her as the founder of NecoleBitchie.com.

“We not only support them because they’re closing, but we gotta keep them in business, we gotta keep patronizing them. People are like, ‘well, it took so long to ship,’ but she had to make the products and ingredients herself. [Sometimes customers] don’t come back because they’re expecting Amazon-level shipping, and we just don’t have it. We’re held to such a high expectation that we just can’t meet right now.”