By Arkansas Black Vitality Staff

Jan. 16, 2026 – ESSENCE Communications Inc., the iconic publisher behind ESSENCE Magazine and the annual New Orleans music festival, has unveiled a groundbreaking online shopping platform—WeLoveUs.shop—designed to uplift Black women-led businesses and culturally rooted brands across the country, including Arkansas.

Launched during Cyber Week, WeLoveUs.shop is more than just a marketplace. It’s a community commerce platform that provides Black women entrepreneurs with stronger cash flow, consistent visibility, and direct access to consumers. The curated digital retail destination features a vibrant mix of emerging and established Black-owned brands in beauty, wellness, home, lifestyle, and gifting—all vetted through ESSENCE’s trusted editorial lens. Shoppers can now invest directly in a founder’s dream with every purchase.

This initiative comes at a critical time. Black women and their communities are facing one of the toughest labor markets in decades, with steep job losses and limited access to capital, said ESSENCE’s Chief Content Officer Michele Ghee. Entrepreneurship has become a vital path to financial stability, but barriers like delayed payments and lack of scalable retail channels persist.

“Black women are building businesses in the midst of economic uncertainty, and they often do it without access to the retail infrastructure their peers rely on,” said Ghee. “The WeLoveUs.shop platform was designed to offer stability and a real pathway to scale in a moment where that support is needed most.”

Ghee further emphasized that WeLoveUs.shop tackles these challenges head-on by offering bi-weekly payouts, real-time inventory sync via Shopify Collective, centralized customer service, and a transparent 30-35% commission model—replacing the long delays of traditional retail and giving founders the operational room they need to thrive.

The launch collection showcases industries where Black women are driving cultural and consumer growth, including beauty, skincare, wellness, fashion, home, and grooming. Standout brands such as SAREP + ROSE, LAMIK Beauty, Abeille Creations, KAZMALEJE, F&W Style, SOKO, Alodia Haircare, Pecandy, RVL Wellness Co, and Maneuver Men’s Grooming are just a few of the innovators featured.

With over 100 Black-owned brands and more than 1,000 products already signed on, WeLoveUs.shop will continue to expand with curated collections tied to key retail periods like Black History Month, Mother’s Day, ESSENCE Festival of Culture, and Father’s Day. Additional brands will join throughout the year, broadening the platform’s reach into accessories, leather goods, home fragrance, kid care, specialty foods, and more.

WeLoveUs.shop is part of the larger Black-owned Sundial Media & Technology Group ecosystem, which aims to lift small businesses by solving gaps in discovery, storytelling, credibility, scale, and demand. Participating brands receive built-in visibility across ESSENCE, Refinery29, Beautycon, Unbothered, NaturallyCurly, and SOKO MRKT, plus access to New Voices Foundation programming and a national network of entrepreneurs.

Richelieu Dennis, executive chairman of Sundial Group of Companies, described the platform as “an economic engine designed to restore opportunity, dignity, and ownership to communities that have been systematically excluded from growth. Through our Community Commerce model, we’re using the full strength of our platforms to redirect capital, visibility, and long-term economic value back into the hands of our entrepreneurs, our creators, and our consumers.”

Arkansas entrepreneurs and shoppers can explore WeLoveUs.shop at https://weloveus.shop/, joining a movement that’s reshaping the future of Black-owned business—one purchase at a time.