A Black-owned deodorant brand that started in a kitchen is now sold in a targeted location –

Wisdom often comes from the mouths of kids. For Chantel Powell, the concept to create Play Pits got here from her then-six-yr-old son, Kam, who insisted on sharing his homemade deodorant with the remaining of the children at his summer camp. Powell created the child-friendly deodorant after first-hand experience with Kam.

“He arrived in a car smelling like a grown man,” he confirms jokingly BLACK ENTERPRISES.

She started product search she could give to her energetic middle child. As someone who suffers from hand eczema, Powell needed to concentrate to product ingredients to avoid irritating her hands. There was nothing in the market. Powell felt comfortable wearing Kam’s body, so she created her own.

“I didn’t want to give him toxic antidepressants with all these harsh ingredients, and natural deodorants were boring,” Powell said.

Play Pits, a kid’s deodorant, was created in the kitchen with ingredients that Grandma Powell taught her so that parents would not should accept harmful ingredients and products that barely worked.

The fire almost destroyed the corporate. From the ashes – rebirth into something greater

Powell got the decision at 3 a.m. in September 2022 that single-handedly modified the whole lot for Play Pits. Business grew 500% between 2020 and 2021. By then, Powell had moved to Atlanta from Maryland. It also moved into a warehouse to maintain up with demand, including demand for Target Stores. Two years after moving into the warehouse, a neighbor called and said there was a fire.

“My husband and I got up without words and left. My body was calm, but my heart was beating like crazy. I saw the hearth from the highway,” she recalled. “I lost the whole lot.”

The loss included the equipment she practically started with. The fire destroyed 7,000 units, all of its fragrances, raw materials and an $11,000 machine that produced deodorants. Worse still, it needed to lay off a few of its employees.

This is Powell, a faithful woman TO BE that God told her that the hearth would only be a part of their story and wouldn’t be the tip. Nevertheless, it was a difficult time for the mother of three children, who devoted herself to business and even gave up her full-time job in the entertainment industry. The hardest part concerning the fire is that insurance didn’t fully cover the damage.

“Everyone kept saying, ‘Make sure you’ve gotten high accountability,’ so I needed to have a certain level of accountability. But nobody said, “Chantel, have you checked your property damage insurance?”

The insurance company paid out only a fraction of the quantity lost. And if that wasn’t enough, the insurance company dropped the corporate from its policy though the hearth wasn’t its fault. Play Pits insurance greater than quadrupled.

Two years after the hearth, the corporate is still recovering. But amongst Powell’s challenges made it on Target shelves, built relationships and partnerships with local youth sports organizations, and made its products available to adults who love them.

“After the fire, everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” Powell says. “When people see the success of Play Pits (or), when they walk into Target and see Play Pits on the shelves, they just see the product. I see obstacles. I see the challenges I have overcome.”

Greater than smelling good. Play Pits inspires the subsequent generation of Black CEOs

Customer service and giving back are on the core of her brand, especially towards those that proceed to encourage her most: children.

She says what sets her other than other brands, beyond giving parents peace of mind with the clean ingredients she uses, is that she treats each customer with care as in the event that they were a member of her circle of relatives. Listening to children about their desires is also necessary to Powell, so she makes sure that children sit on the adult table and meets with them at the youngsters’s table.

“What sets us apart and will continue to stand out is our ability to stay in touch with our customers. I will sit with the children on the floor at a round table. I don’t ever want to feel far from what I’m here for,” he says. “Children have always been at the center of everything.”

Powell doesn’t take her position as a Black woman CEO frivolously. Growing up, the CEOs in her classes were nothing like her. Part of her work in the community is also about showing up as an authentic person and being a representation that can encourage the subsequent generation.

“I know what it means when I walk into a classroom full of African-American kids and they see me walking in in Jordans, a T-shirt and jeans and saying, ‘I’m the CEO,'” Powell says. “When I was a little girl, the CEO was a white man in a suit and it didn’t seem viable to me (…) I’m on the path to continue working in the community.”