Maryland

Thereasa Black was selling date-sweetened chocolate bars at farmers markets and grocery stores, but couldn’t see what was working. As a single mother bootstrapping her business, she went to a Veteran EDGE conference searching for direction. Amazon was there, meeting with veteran entrepreneurs and hosting discussions on growth strategies. A fellow veteran thriving in Amazon’s store told her the potential with Amazon Ads was real.

“He said, ‘It’s worth it. You’re not just putting money in, it actually comes back to you tenfold,’” said Black. She went home and invested $10 a day into Amazon Ads. Sales climbed 3,000% in months.
“Amazon gave me the data I needed to make the right decisions to grow my business,” Black said.

Sisters Kim Hehir and Sue Delegan knew they had something special in their family’s traditional bone broth recipe, which had nursed Delegan’s rescue dog Brutus back to health.

Together, they launched Brutus Bone Broth in 2018, selling in the Amazon store as well in two supermarket chains. The broth was an immediate success, hitting number-one in its category almost immediately.

With the credibility it offered Brutus Bone Broth’s products, Amazon paved the way for the company’s brick-and-mortar success in the years that followed.

Adrienne Walker didn’t want to spend the next 15 or 20 years of her life working on presentation slides and spreadsheets. So she left her job with the FDA and took a leap of faith to launch BlueHenry, a thriving business that sells a premium collection of dried fruit garnishes and rimming salts and sugars.

“There is a challenge every day when you’ve got a small business. You need cheerleaders. And Amazon has created a wonderful environment for small business, giving us all the tools we need to succeed,” she said.

With support from Amazon, BlueHenry is now up to 15 employees and is expanding their facilities from 2,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

Take a family of four kids, a baker and a natural-born entrepreneur, and you’ve got the Smelly Kids Company. Parents Andrea and Franklin Thomas—who met back when they were working as chefs—were inspired by their own kids to make natural bath and body products.

The family originally started with three products. Today their collection includes close to 25 products, from lip balm to foaming soap.

With the help of an Amazon grant and the assistance of Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator program, the Thomases aren’t just expanding their ecommerce business—they’ve also been able to move operations from their home to a brick-and-mortar shop.