As Black people, we deserve diversity when it comes to art materials too!
Entrepreneurs Color Too is a best-selling Black-owned coloring book and supply company that was founded by Latoya Nicole to promote diversity within the art space and create adult coloring books that promote self-care, wellness, and most importantly, self-love.
On the leg of its major milestone of selling 25,000 books, the company has launched its newest addition for adults: “Shades of Brown” colored pencils.
“Thinking back to when I was a child I remember seeing very few books with Black women as the main character, let alone seeing a Black woman on the cover,” said Nicole in an interview with AfroTech. “My brand Entrepreneurs Color Too aims to be inspiring and relatable to young girls and women like me.”
The path to funding for Nicole has been all about bootstrapping her business through the money from her day job and now that the business has sold over 25,000 books on Amazon alone, the money is used as reinvestment back into her business.
For the latest collection, Nicole was inspired by women around her and the coloring pencils feature names of everyday women.
“Black women that I know and see every day are the inspiration behind the ‘Shades of Brown’ Skin Tone Coloring Pencils,” continued Nicole. “When choosing the names I was very intentional to include names of many Black women that we all know. And, especially to include names that we rarely saw represented on custom items, such as key chains, growing up.”
The overall mission for Nicole with Entrepreneurs Color Too is to encourage aspiring authors.
“I want to encourage aspiring authors to create coloring books and journals so I will be creating more courses on how to brand, publish and market your book,” shared Nicole. “I believe what has worked for me can be succeeded by others coming after me and this is my challenge to them to acknowledge [the thought that] ‘My dreams really don’t have to be so far away from my reality because dreams just mean that if you can envision it then it’s possible.'”
Click here to order directly from Entrepreneurs Color Too.