#Squad - Black Celebrities join $24 million investment round for Bevel
- Medvis Jackson
- Oct 26, 2015
- 2 min read
Tristan Walker’s winning streak over the last two 21 months continues. But the real story may not lay in his individual success but in the collective and cultural effort of his rise to profitability.
This past month was a good one for Tristan Walker and his team at Walker and Company Brands. As reported by Alex Konrad of Forbes, Walker's flagship brand, Bevel gained a distribution deal with Target as well as additional funding and he raised an additional $24 million dollars in a series B round.
Celebrity Investors squad up on Bevel's Series B Round
From Left to Right: Carmelo Anthony, Nas, Harrison Barnes, John Legend, Magic Johnson and Andre Iguodala
However, what’s really cool about this round is that in addition to the big time venture capital firms and investors like Upfront Ventures, Collaborative Fund and Ron Johnson and Andreesen Horowitz, a number of prominent black celebrities have invested their personal earnings into Tristan Walker.
These celebrities include Carmelo Anthony and his firm, Melo7, Magic Johnson, John Legend, Nas and basketball players, Andre Iguodala and Harrison Barnes.
Walker’s flagship brand and productis the Bevel razor, a razor designed to eliminate razor burn and irritation for people with coarse or curly hair. It's design and engineering has made it particularly popular with males of African descent.
Already Bevel has gained market share on across various demographics and in 14 countries. So far, the product's subscription based model enjoys a 95% customer renewal rate.
The $24 million series B round of funding will allow Walker & Co to hire the best sales and research & development talent for the Bevel and potentially future brands.
Blacks can work together Collectively on Positive and Profitable Ideas
As Tristan Walker continues to build out Bevel and to develop other beauty and wellness brands for “all people of color,” there are some awesome lessons. One of biggest lessons: blacks can work together and can invest big bucks in innovative ideas that help the wider community.
Tristan Walker, the genius behind Bevel
While Walker was able to convince white and large financial institutions to back a product designed especially for a specific minority audience in the seed and series A rounds, he, more impressively, worked to gain funding from prominent celebrities in series B.
This instance of black innovators and wealthy black celebrities working collectively to create amazingly profitable products that are good for society will hopefully become part of a more encouraging and revolutionary trend.
This diversity of innovation and investment will allow for incredibly engineered products that cater to various markets of consumers, bypassing of the predominately Eurocentric products available today.
So take note America- our collective future can be a bright one if we can just get greater variety of players in the game.
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Medvis Jackson is a web designer at Hindsite, curator at Kulchah and avid cricket fan. You can follow him @medvisjackson for his random thoughts.
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