Topicals Founder Olamide Olowe Reflects On Her Bread Beauty Supply Brand ‘Flopping’ And Its Revival – AfroTech
Olamide Olowe wants to revive Bread Beauty Supply (Bread).
As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Topicals Founder and CEO Olowe and President Sochi Mbadugha acquired the brand in 2025 through Cost of Doing Business (CODB), the holding company they share. The pair brings experience from Topicals, a fast-growing skincare brand that has sold more than 6 million units of its eye mask, Olowe confirmed in a TikTok video. Topicals has also raised more than $22 million in funding, she noted.
“So take all of that and think about my next move, which is me acquiring a haircare brand called Bread Beauty Supply last year, and having the vision with my holding company called Cost of Doing Business…to acquire and launch brands that serve my community, that take my expertise and my experience from Topicals and create experiences, brands for people who look like me, people who want to experience both luxury branding [and] want to have a really great experience with your products. You want them to be fun and cultural, but you also want them to be effective,” Olowe explained in the video.
@olamideolowe I need your help rebuilding @BREAD BEAUTY 🥺
Following the acquisition, the first product to launch was a Slick Hold Gel in a 2-ounce container. It targets 4C hair and promises no flakes, no white residue, and no stickiness for up to 12 hours. Olowe strongly believes in the product, but upon its launch, she revealed there were “almost no sales.”
“Imagine me launching and it flopping, like absolutely flopping … I did what I thought worked at Topicals for Bread and not having that same response. Mind you, Bread is fully funded out of my pocket. I have spent basically my life savings trying to revive this brand, trying to carry this brand, and making sure that it stayed Black-owned and that it was successful in the midst of so many Black-owned brands closing,” she expressed in the TikTok video.
Olowe is now turning to her community to seek guidance on blind spots in her marketing and rollout strategy. Despite her success as a founder with Topicals, she is starting at “square one” and recognizes that far more brands have launched since Bread and Topicals debuted in 2020.
The overwhelming response from the community was that Topicals and Bread are two separate brands, which she affirmed, noting that they have different customers and that she intended to “build different worlds for each brand.” In hindsight, she questions whether this was a mistake.
In another TikTok video she also admits she was navigating how to bring her own vision fully into the brand while honoring the vision of Maeva Heim, Bread founder.
“The question is, ‘How do you preserve the founding vision while simultaneously positioning a brand for growth?’” she explained on TikTok. …And I think specifically, ‘how do you do that when the founding vision may be loved by the community, but isn’t commercially viable, or it’s not proving itself to be commercially viable?’ I have struggled with that question so much over this last year, and I think that’s actually also impacted the growth of the company. You know? I can only bring the experience I have from Topicals to Bread, and I’ve wanted to do that, but, I also don’t want to strip Bread from, like, who it is and who it wants to be. Do I preserve what I was given or do I bring my full self to this brand?”
@olamideolowe Replying to @Blessing Nwodo how do I preserve the founding vision of Bread while positioning the brand for growth?
She intends to revive Bread by sending more products to creators, launching additional community activations, and hosting influencer events that invite micro-creators to learn more about the brand. She will also be more forward-facing by creating content that shows how to use the Slick Hold Gel.
“I am going to be doing a lot more creative stuff. I’m gonna be in shoots, which is something I’ve never done before. I have a really big fear of being like in front of the camera, and so I have some fun things that I’m working on,” she said. “I think I felt so much pressure to be successful because Topicals was successful, and I’m excited to learn again. Thank you all so much for listening, and I’ll be back again yapping and talking about all the different parts of rebuilding Bread.”
