São Paulo – During his travels around the world, Maurício Delfino always got requests from the women in his family for Black hair and Black skin products. These demands made him want to create a brand focused on the Brazilian Black community: DaMinhaCor. The company’s first and leading product are swimming caps for afro and voluminous hair. The brand has already some international deals.
The company’s founders, Delfino and his wife Michele Eduardo, can even say it was born awarded. While still in the testing phase, he traveled to different regions in São Paulo presenting the cap. “I heard many racist jokes back then. But in December 2017, my phone rang, and it was a woman from a beauty salon I had visited. She had a mother and a daughter with her. The girl was part of a swimming team and needed the cap to compete or she would have to take her braids off. I delivered the cap, and she won two medals,” Delfino reveals.
The word traveled fast, and a reporter from Revista Piauí was interested in telling the story. So, in January 2018, when the company opened, the story boosted its reach.
The portfolio now includes other swimming items like swimsuits, speedos, goggles, towels and flippers. Plus, DaMinhaCor branched out into the food, healthcare and beauty industries with reusable hair nets for restaurants and salons, as well as disposable scrub caps for hospitals and clinics.
History of the brand
Born in the outskirts of São Paulo, before opening DaMinhaCor, Delfino was a courier, then he started his career in sales, where he has a 20-year experience. When he had the idea of creating a business, he paused to reflect on the sector he would embrace.
“I’m an exception to the Black population rule, as I was able to travel around the world a lot as a tourist. And my family always asked me to bring something related to [Black] hair and skin. And I started wondering if there was as an opportunity for this to become a business,” he said.
Remembering his teenage years when he saw the women of his family straightening up their hair with hot iron, Delfino decided to invest in products focused not on changing but exalting Black features. “Back then, they had to hide who they were. So I thought I could create a brand to design products for the Black community as many things are not designed for us but for people with straight hair,” he explained.
By combining his corporate skills and the demands he identified, he created what he defined as “a business that specializes in innovative and socially smart products for the Black community.”
Using markets like the United States as a reference but building on the local circumstances, Delfino decided to break into the sector. “When you look at the Brazilian history, how we’ve torn from Africa and brought here was extremely cruel, and many knew a loved one that was thrown overboard. When they arrived alive, after so much brutality, they missed a relative who drowned. This alone makes swimming different for the Black population. Now in Brazil, most of the people who swim and do water aerobics are white people, as pools are something for rich people here. So I thought, this is the best environment for me to position my brand,” he said.
In the sportswear line, swimming caps are the leading product of DaMinhaCor. The brand has contracts with Centauro, Decathlon and Carrefour.
Branching out: Cosmetics and PPEs
After one year, the company launched a cosmetics line led by Michele Eduardo. Products include masks and curl activators, as well as makeup items. The businessman got the idea during a visit to Tunisia. “I saw many people with skin colors similar to mine, and I thought that our cosmetics could sell well,” he said.
In 2020, however, during the pandemic, when the brand didn’t sell its leading product for six months, the couple had to innovate again. “Before DaMinhaCor, my wife used to work as a nurse, and we notice that there were no scrub caps [for afro hair] available. We bought fabric, then we went down to the sewing factory and asked for a larger cap. This item became more and more important, and we reinvented it. Then other people said they wanted reusable hair nets for food services, too,” he said.
The new line of work led the brand to reach clients such as O Boticário and Mondelez. “When we talk about our PPE [personal protection equipment] line, the good thing is that large manufacturers and multinational companies are working with equality [policies], so they are adapting. Some large companies are buying our products,” he said.
Overall, DaMichaCor has 30 regional resellers, as well as four small resellers overseas – in Maputo, Mozambique; France; Lisbon, Portugal; and Miami, US.
Plans
For the future, he wants to expand the swimwear line. “We are preparing for a multinational company to invest in or maybe even buy our brand, so that I can ship our products and expand throughout Brazil,” he said.
Besides the online store, Delfino stresses that the focus is on brick-and-mortar points of sale that are concentrated in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, and São Paulo. “My biggest desire is to expand to stores across the country. I always say that just like a white person walks into a store and gets their product, a Black person should also have a shelf, get their product and know it was designed for them,” he says.
Regarding exports, another goal is making the brand more relevant to Decathlon. “We’d like them to close some kind of global partnership with us, not only in Brazil [like it’s now]. We have worked to become more relevant to them,” he said. As for PPEs, they aim to sign with fast-food chains so that they can make their product go international.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
