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300+ women-owned brands to support year-round

Learn more about the women behind our favorite beauty products, apparel and more.
Get to know women-owned brands across shopping categories like fashion, beauty, food and fitness.
Get to know women-owned brands across shopping categories like fashion, beauty, food and fitness.Megababe; gr8nola; Bonita Fierce Candles

It isn’t uncommon to see children sitting on their parents’ laps inside Saalt’s Boise, Idaho office. That’s because Cherie Hoeger, CEO and co-founder of the period care purveyor, who has six children of her own, designed it with working mothers in mind.

Knowing a 40-hour work week is rarely viable for women balancing a career and a family — and since 80% of Saalt’s workforce is made up of women — part of Saalt’s office space is a free, in-office preschool for employees’ children, and the company offers paid personal and sick leave. “Children are just a regular part of our office environment,” says Hoeger, who often brings her own toddler son to the office. This type of culture has attracted female talent to Saalt that may not otherwise be in the workplace.

Research shows that working mothers typically face a so-called “Maternal Wall” that views them as less competent and less committed to their jobs, in addition to other sexist stereotypes, as well as lack of funding and childcare. Instead of waiting for these and tangential circumstances to change, women business owners are taking matters into their own hands.

“We have such power as female founders and leaders to break barriers and empower the women we lead,” says Hoeger. “If not us, then who?”

To understand the realities women face in running their businesses, we spoke to more than a dozen business owners about the challenges and successes they’ve experienced, and rounded up more than 300 women-owned businesses we think you should know about across categories like apparel, skin care, home goods and more. Each of the following businesses are at least 51% women-owned, which is in line with the Small Business Administration’s (as well as the Census Bureau) requirement when brands apply to its Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contracting Program.

SKIP AHEAD Beauty & skin care brands | Clothing and accessories brands | Food & beverage brands | Home and kitchen brands | Children and family brands | Bookstores and education brands | Wellness and fitness brands 

Women-owned beauty and skin care brands

Cocokind

Priscilla Tsai, co-founder and CEO of Cocokind, tells us she never left home without a full face of makeup in her early 20s due to severe acne and skin sensitivities. Tsai launched Cocokind to provide products made with gentle ingredients — a Formula Facts panel on the packaging also details what’s inside each bottle. A Sustainability Facts panel also includes details on its materials, carbon emissions, production information and more.

Hero Cosmetics

Ju Rhyu, co-founder of Hero Cosmetics, says she wanted to build a brand that “helped people reclaim [their] skin confidence.” Hero Cosmetics offers acne care products like spot treatments, hydrocolloid acne patches and under-eye care. Body care products such as body wash and moisturizer, as well as face cleanser, sunscreen and serums are also included.

Megababe

Katie Sturino tells us that when she first launched Megababe, the beauty industry didn’t understand the issues she was trying to solve: Products for thigh chafe, for example, were made for men or athletes, and Sturino felt they were sub-par. “Women deserved a clean, effective product that we wouldn’t be embarrassed to pull out of a handbag,” she says. Six years later, Megababe offers a variety of items to solve body issues beyond chafing, including body odor, sweat and foot odor.

Mooncat

Since Michelle Lin, founder and CEO of Mooncat, wasn’t allowed to wear nail polish as a kid, creating a nail polish brand was the ultimate act of rebellion. The brand is designed for people who see nails as wearable art, and it offers several unique colors and shimmers to make them pop. 

Kitsch

Cassandra Morales Thurswell built hair and wellness brand Kitsch around a simple, eco-friendly elastic hair tie. “[It’s] something we use daily, but a small change made it a game-changing upgrade,” she told us. “That little accessory’s success showed me that hair care was so much more than shampoo and conditioner.” Since its 2010 launch, Kitsch has expanded its products from hair accessories to hair and body care, sleep and hair removal

Dieux

Founded by three women — a clinical cosmetic chemist, a career brand builder and a multi-hyphenate creative — Dieux offers skin care essentials like eye masks, serums, moisturizers and more. Dieux is also transparent about its pricing and impact: Each product page has key info about how much shipping and materials cost, and its carbon emissions and water impact.

Women-owned clothing and accessories brands

AnaOno

Dana Donofree, AnaOno’s founder and CEO, was diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid-20s and felt like she lost her identity after treatment. This experience led her to create a line of what she called “boob-inclusive lingerie” designed for women who’d undergone breast surgery. “One breast, two breasts, no breasts or new breasts, everyone deserves to be supported,” Donofree tells us. AnaOno partners with Pink Warrior Advocates for its Bra Assistance Program, which provides up to ​​25 post-surgery and mastectomy bras per month to people in financial need. The brand also runs its Natrelle Inspires Bra program — for every Natrelle Inspires Bra purchased, one bra is donated to a breast cancer patient diagnosed within the last 12 months.

Eberjey

Ali Mejia and Mariela Rovito, co-founders of Eberjey, began the company in 1996 and aimed to design pajamas and lingerie that were both beautiful and comfortable. Today, the founders told us Eberjey’s team is 95% women, many of whom are mothers, including themselves. Because of this, they were conscious about providing employees the flexibility and resources they needed to balance work and motherhood during the pandemic. Eberjey now offers optional remote work that’s permanently available at the company.

Lisa Says Gah

After a decade in the fashion industry, Lisa Bühler created Lisa Says Gah as an “anti-shop” shop where unique, diverse and independent designs can live. The brand offers a range of clothing, accessories, shoes, home decor and more in vibrant colors and fun designs. 

Little Words Project

Inspired by the classic friendship bracelet, Adriana Carrig created Little Words Project as a way to create wearable affirmations and reminders of one’s self-worth and self-love. The brand offers pre-made bracelets with positive phrases like “Keep Going” and “You Got This.” Shoppers can also make their own bracelet with a custom saying. 

Hill House Home

Nell Diamond initially founded Hill House Home after she had trouble finding well-crafted pieces to accessorize her first apartment. Since its launch in 2016, the brand expanded from beautifully designed home and bedding products to chic dresses, shoes, pajamas and even kids and baby clothes

White/Space

Khadijah Fulton was a fashion designer for a decade before launching jewelry brand White/Space in 2012. Influenced by classic art, Fulton designs unique pieces, including earrings, necklaces and rings. Each collection is designed and made by hand in collaboration with small workshops and individual artisans in downtown Los Angeles, according to the brand.

Women-owned food and beverage brands

Caribbrew

When she moved to the U.S. in 2009, Beverly Malbranche, founder and CEO of Caribbrew, realized there was an unfulfilled market for Haitian coffee, a beverage she fell in love with while growing up in Haiti. Establishing a Black-owned coffee company allowed her to expose customers to new roasts and economically support women-owned farms in Haiti. She purchases their beans and helps ensure female farmers get paid equally compared to their male counterparts.

Gr8nola

Erica Liu Williams started making granola at home while doing a cleanse with her husband and began selling it at farmers’ markets. That led her to found Gr8nola, which she grew by stocking office pantries at tech companies like Google and Uber. The pandemic severely disrupted Gr8nola’s operations when people began working from home, but the brand shifted its focus to building its direct-to-consumer sales. This pivot taught Williams how to adapt in unexpected scenarios and still be successful. Gr8nola offers granola in flavors like Cacao Chip, Cinnamon Chai and Peanut Butter. All of the brand’s products are made without soy, dairy and refined sugars. 

Lil Bucks

Lil Bucks founder Emily Griffith first stumbled upon sprouted buckwheat seeds as a grain-free granola replacement in Australia. She wanted to bring buckwheat, a fruit seed that comes from the buckwheat flower, to the U.S. and did so by establishing her company in 2018. Lil Bucks debuted its first product line at a fitness festival in Chicago, and the brand now offers multiple product lines, including Lil Bucks, Clusterbucks and SZN-ing. All of Lil Buck’s products are centered around buckwheat and many items are free from the top 8 food allergens, including peanuts, wheat, soybeans and milk.

Mrs. Bakewell’s

Two factors inspired Rose Bakewell to launch Mrs. Bakewell’s, which sells boxes of cream tea scones: Her love of baking and British history. “I decided I wanted to offer a quintessentially English tradition to America to enjoy in the comfort of their own homes,” she told us. Mrs. Bakewell’s scones are made without preservatives, artificial colors and artificial flavors, and they’re available in flavors like Classic Plain, Cranberry-Orange and Blueberry-Lemon.

Partake Foods

Denise Woodard founded Partake after struggling to find allergy-friendly snacks for her daughter, and the company has rapidly expanded since its 2016 launch. Its cookies, breakfast mixes, graham crackers and vanilla wafers are available in stores nationwide, including Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Kroger. Partake’s products are gluten-free, vegan and free from the top 9 allergens.

Simple Mills

Constantly traveling for work often forced Katlin Smith to rely on packaged foods, but eating them didn’t leave her feeling her best. She switched to a primarily whole foods-based diet to improve her health and wanted to encourage others to do the same. Smith established Simple Mills in 2012, making gluten-free, nutrient-dense snacks like crackers, cookies, bars and baking mixes more accessible to customers across the country. Simple Mills now sells its products in over 28,000 stores nationwide, according to the company.

Women-owned home and kitchen brands

Bonita Fierce

Melissa Gallardo started her candle company after noticing that the scents she grew up with were underrepresented in the home fragrance industry. “I set out to create a collection of Latina-inspired candles to share la cultura with the rest of the world,” Gallardo told us. After launching Bonita Fierce in 2020, the brand became the first Latina-owned candle brand sold at Nordstrom and formed part of the inaugural cohort for the Ulta Beauty MUSE Accelerator program, which provides financial support for BIPOC-owned beauty brands.

Ettitude

Once she saw the fashion industry use environmentally friendly textiles in clothing, Phoebe Yu, Ettitude’s founder and CEO, wanted to do the same for the bedding industry. She leaned on her experience working in textile supply chain management and merchandising to create Ettitude’s proprietary CleanBamboo fabric before launching the brand, which she runs alongside co-founder and president Kat Dey. Ettitude sells bedding products like sheets and pillowcases, as well as bath towels and robes

Parachute

Because she ran an interior design blog, Ariel Kaye used to help her friends and family design their homes. While doing so, she had a hard time finding bedding she deemed high quality, affordable and dependable, which inspired her to start Parachute and offer the exact products she was looking for. Parachute sells items like sheets and bath towels, and recently expanded into furniture and rugs.

Poplight

Moving into their first home together presented Caroline Matthes and Rose Fierman with a problem: They wanted to add modern wall lighting to their space, but traditional sconces were a hassle to install and not renter-friendly. Thus, Poplight was born. You can hang up the wall light via double-sided sticky tape, make sure it’s straight with the built-in level and recharge the battery as needed instead of dealing with wires and plugs. The Poplight also connects to an app, allowing you to control it, adjust its brightness and set a sleep timer.

Material Kitchen

According to co-founders Eunice Byun and Dave Nguyen, Material Kitchen was inspired by the power of coming together to share a meal. They wanted to create dinnerware and kitchenware that were functional yet looked beautiful when displayed at home. The co-founders sell products like prepware, knives, cookware, ceramics, tools, glassware and linens. It also donates to various nonprofits each year, like Apex for Youth, Heart of Diner and The Lower East Side Girls Club.

Farmgirl Flowers

In 2010, Christina Stembel took $49,000, which was her entire life savings at the time, and put it toward starting Farmgirl Flowers, an online flower delivery company. She’s grown the business over the past 14 years without outside funding. Farmgirl Flowers works with growers across the country to source seasonal flowers and ships its signature burlap wrapped bouquets nationwide.

Women-owned baby and kids brands

Posh Peanut

Fiona Sahakian founded Posh Peanut in 2011 after years of working as a hairdresser. She says the 2008 recession jeopardized her ability to provide for her family, so she took a leap and embarked on a new business venture. “I used that moment as an opportunity to create something that was mine, and that I was passionate about,” Sahakian says. Posh Peanut sells clothing and accessories for children, as well as apparel for adults and items for nurseries like changing pad covers, crib sheets and more.

Kids Crafts

Kids Crafts sells activity kits for preteens themed around female trailblazers like Ella Fitzgerald, Amanda Gorman, Greta Thunberg and Amelia Earhart. Each kit comes with the materials needed to construct, package and sell handmade crafts, which teaches girls about entrepreneurship and gives them the opportunity to earn money by running their own business, says owner Kirsten Field.

Slumberkins

Childhood best friends Kelly Oriard, a family therapist, and Callie Christensen, a special education teacher, started Slumberkins out of their desire to give caregivers tools to aid children’s emotional development. The brand’s stuffed animals are paired with affirmations, board books and educational resources that adults can use to teach kids lessons about conflict resolution, self-acceptance, stress, grief and more. Slumberkins also developed a curriculum schools can use in classes.

Sloomoo Institute

Sloomoo Institute encourages sensory play through its vibrantly colored, scented, textured slime. Karen Robinovitz and Sara Schiller co-founded the company in 2019. Sloomoo began as an in-person experience in Soho, New York City, and the brand now has additional locations in Chicago, Atlanta and Houston with plans to continue expanding across the country. The brand also sells slime, slime making kits and subscription boxes online so those of all ages can enjoy using it at home.

Little Spoon

Little Spoon is like a meal delivery service, but for kids. Co-founded by Angela Vranich and Michelle Muller, the brand sells baby food, pre-cut finger food for toddlers and pre-made meals for elementary schoolers, plus snacks and smoothie pouches. Since it launched, Little Spoon has delivered over 40 million meals nationwide, according to the brand.

Hatch Collective

In 2011, Ariane Goldman founded Hatch to offer mothers chic maternity clothes as well as beauty and wellness products they could use during and after pregnancy. Hatch, along with Motherhood Maternity and A Pea in the Pod, partnered under a new parent company in 2023: Hatch Collective, of which Goldman is the CEO.

Women-owned bookstores and education brands

Greenlight Bookstore

Greenlight Bookstore was founded in 2009 in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to an expansive collection of physical books, e-books and audiobooks that you can purchase online, Greenlight also hosts author talks, book groups, in-store children’s story time and more. It also has a subscription plan called First Edition Club, which sends subscribers a signed first edition of a newly published book each month. 

Little Patakha

Little Patakha — “firework” in Hindi — offers puzzles, activities and other educational tools to teach children about diverse ideas, sounds and people. Founder Akshata Nayak built the company to help parents and teachers introduce new cultures and stories to their little ones, and subsequently teach self-confidence, acceptance and representation, according to the brand.

Mighty Kind

Nadine Fonseca launched Mighty Kind to spark conversations among children about bias, diversity and inclusion through its educational magazines, both in the classroom and at home. Since its start in 2019, Mighty Kind has since restructured to be a community-based digital model, and though it no longer produces new issues of its quarterly magazines, you can still purchase individual digital editions

Nook & Cranny

Based in Seattle, Washington, Nook & Cranny opened its doors in 2022  as a new and used bookstore and a community space. Its collection of books are handpicked and curated by Nook & Cranny staff, and they offer store credit for used books in good condition. The bookstore also hosts events weekly, including author chats, open mic nights and book clubs. Though you can’t purchase physical books on its website, you can order monthly book subscription boxes, puzzles, journals and more.  

Parnassus Books

Parnassus Books was founded in 2011 by author Ann Patchett and her business partner Karen Hayes after one of two main bookstores in Nashville, Tennessee had closed down. Parnassus has a large collection of fiction, non-fiction, children’s, art books and more, and it even houses an extensive local author section. Parnassus also has an online magazine called Musing, which highlights Patchett’s blog, staff picks, author interviews and more.

Reading in Public

Reading in Public is a bookstore and cafe located in West Des Moines, Iowa. It was created by Duke graduate Linzi Murray after living in New York City during the pandemic, and realizing how essential bookstores really were for her and the community after the shutdown. On its website, you’ll find fiction, non-fiction, children’s books and more, as well as audiobooks and events.

Women-owned wellness and fitness brands

Saalt

During a period of political instability in Venezuela, Cherie Hoeger learned that her family did not have access to period care products for months. She started researching reusable options, which led her to create a collection of menstrual cups and period underwear. Part of Saalt’s mission is to provide reusable period care products to those experiencing period poverty — a lack of access to menstrual products — across the world. Saalt is a certified B Corp and commits 2% of annual revenue to donating products to underserved communities. Since it was founded, Saalt has donated over 100,000 period cups and underwear to those in need across more than 50 countries, according to the brand.

Frame Fitness

Melissa Bentivoglio designed a proprietary pilates reformer in 2018 to use in her fitness studio. But she wanted to give people around the world access to it, so she spent years transforming the reformer into a piece of equipment that anyone can buy for at-home use. Frame Fitness, which Bentivoglio co-founded with her husband, Lee Belzberg, officially launched in 2021. The reformer has a built-in screen that allows users to stream on-demand pilates classes, many of which Bentivoglio teaches.

Nodpod

Melissa Bamberg created the first prototype for Nodpod, a weighted sleep mask, in her kitchen in 2009. She wanted to find a way to improve people’s sleep by harnessing the power of deep touch pressure, which involves applying gentle pressure to the body to promote relaxation, according to the brand. Over a decade later, the Nodpod sleep mask, also known as a weighted blanket for your eyes, is sold in major retailers like Target and Anthropologie. The brand also launched Nodpod Body, a weighted pad you can put over your torso or legs.

The Movement Club

The Movement Club is a fitness platform founded by former Dancing with the Stars pro Lindsay Arnold. It offers workout classes under 30 minutes like dance cardio, pilates, HIIT, yoga and stretching. Arnold designs classes to be accessible to anyone regardless of their fitness level or prior experience, and uploads new videos to the platform each week.

Evolvetogether

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Cynthia Sakai stopped selling jewelry and started selling face masks. She wanted to give people more access to personal protective equipment that was hard to come by at the time. Four years later, Evolvetogether still sells masks for adults and kids, but it’s expanded its offerings to other daily essentials as well, like hand cream, lip balm and deodorant.

Touchland

Andrea Lisbona founded Touchland with the goal of elevating hand sanitizer. She created a non-sticky, moisturizing, FDA-compliant formula that’s sold in over 16 scents and packed in containers that makes it easy to dispense on the go. In addition to Touchland’s original hand sanitizer, the brand offers Gentle Mist, which is specifically designed for those with sensitive skin.

Why trust NBC Select?

Mili Godio and Zoe Malin are, respectively, the updates editor and associate updates editor at NBC Select. To write this article, they connected with hundreds of women-owned businesses to confirm that they’re at least 51% women-owned. (To be considered a women-owned business, a company must be at least 51% women-owned, according to the Census Bureau.) Godio and Malin also rounded up notable products from women-owned businesses across shopping categories.

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