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Strategy February 14, 2019

Walmart Highlights Young Entrepreneurs for Black History Month

By  Theresa Hegel

Walmart is celebrating Black History Month by highlighting the accomplishments of a few young entrepreneurs and pushing the social tag #ReignOn. Among those honored by the retail giant is Kheris Rogers, a 12-year-old activist and model who, at 10, started the Flexin’ In My Complexion clothing line with her older sister.

Throughout elementary school, Rogers was bullied for her dark skin. In 2017, Taylor Pollard, Rogers’ older sister, tweeted a photo of Rogers with the hashtag #FlexinInHerComplexion. It was a phrase their grandmother used to encourage the girls to feel beautiful. “When that picture was published, I went viral,” Rogers told CNBC. Pollard and Rogers decided to channel the positive response from the tweet into a business, screen printing the phrase onto T-shirts in their garage.

View this post on Instagram

Year of the Lion 🦁 ♌️ #kherisrogers #flexininmycomplexion #leo

A post shared by Kheris Rogers🍫🍫🍫 (@kherispoppin) on Jan 6, 2019 at 3:34pm PST

The clothing line was an almost-instant hit, with celebrities like Alicia Keys and Lupita Nyong’o spotted wearing Flexin’ In My Complexion shirts. Last year, at age 11, she was the youngest designer to show during Fashion Week and was named one of Teen Vogue’s 21 under 21 class of 2018.

Walmart also honored Moziah Bridges, the founder, president and creative director of Mo’s Bows. The teen started making his own bow ties, with the help of his grandmother, after being unable to find a style he liked in stores. Back in 2017, Bridges, a Shark Tank alum, inked a seven-figure, one-year licensing deal with the NBA to make bow ties for all 30 of its teams.

Marley Dias, creator of #1000BlackGirlBooks, was recognized by Walmart as well. Dias started her viral social media campaign because she didn’t see girls who looked like her in the books she was reading at school. Since creating the hashtag, Dias collected more than 11,000 books featuring black girls as the main character. Named one of Time’s 25 Most Influential Teens of 2018, Dias has already published her first book, Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You.