Maryland

Navy veteran Thereasa Black transformed her deployment dream into reality by launching Bon AppéSweet, a Maryland-based chocolate company making date-sweetened treats. After listing her chocolates in the Amazon store in 2023, Black implemented a modest $10-15 daily advertising strategy that yielded an impressive 3,000% sales growth, scaling from 1-2 monthly orders to 30 daily orders. Using Amazon Ads and A+ Content, she effectively helps chocolate lovers find her products and understand the benefits of dates while leveraging analytics to optimize product listings and expand flavors.

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.