Ami Colé closed after 4 years — inclusive beauty brand couldn't outrun market headwinds

Ami Colé was an inclusive beauty brand founded by Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye in June 2021 and named after her mother, Aminata "Ami" Colé. The brand launched with skin tints and lip oils formulated for Black and brown women, filling a gap in the market that many larger brands had overlooked. Within 16 months it expanded to 600 Sephora doors nationwide, won over 80 awards including four Allure Best of Beauty honors, and earned a spot on Oprah's Favorite Things.

On July 17, 2025, N'Diaye-Mbaye announced via a personal essay on The Cut that Ami Colé would close in September. She cited unsustainable market conditions: climbing tariff rates, brutal marketing costs for small brands, investor pullback from inclusivity bets, and operational challenges in scaling production to meet unpredictable demand. Despite a 2024 investment from Bold, L'Oréal's venture-capital fund, the brand could not raise enough to offset mounting expansion costs.

The closure was widely covered as a bellwether for Black-owned beauty brands. N'Diaye-Mbaye noted that the post-2020 surge of interest in diversity had faded, leaving brands like hers without the investor support they needed to compete against deep-pocketed conglomerates for prime retail shelf space. Less than one percent of venture-capital funds go to Black founders, Ami Colé's story illustrated how even a critically acclaimed, retail-backed brand could not defy the math.