Since Frizz Fest first began nearly a decade ago, the St. Louis festival that celebrates the joy, culture, creativity, and entrepreneurship in the local Black community has grown into an essential event, with live music, art installations, and a hair show, among other draws. The heat this past weekend didn’t quell the scores of people who turned out to Tower Grove Park for the festival’s ninth year.
One element that’s remained consistent since Frizz Fest’s inception is the support and platform that organizers creat for small, Black-owned businesses. Frizzy by Nature CEO and founder Leslie Hughes, who founded the event, recalls that vendors in the festival’s Blooming Business Market were the main attraction in Frizz Fest’s early years, long before they started booking headlining artists.
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“Everything was [still] cool, but on a much smaller scale,” she explains. “We saw how much people came out and enjoyed shopping with these businesses, engaging with them.”
Hughes adds it was gratifying to see the passion their owners poured in each year. She decided it was essential for Frizzy by Nature, which puts on Frizz Fest, to devise as many ways as it could to support the Black-owned businesses vending with it each year.
“As the festival grew, so did our businesses,” Hughes says. “And then so did this idea to, ‘How can we support these businesses that really pour into the festival so much?’”
For longtime Frizz Fest vendor Kendra Hunt, the festival’s organizers have more than lived up to that aspiration. Hunt is the founder and formulater of With Love Skincare, which offers skincare products for men and women made from nontoxic ingredients, and has vended at Frizz Fest for eight of its nine years.
“The creators, they’ve been consistent since day one,” she says. “Obviously, it’s on a much larger scale now, but they have always been supportive to the small businesses and wanting us to succeed in the best way possible.”
Hunt explains that takes the form of Frizzy by Nature identifying grant opportunities and other markets for vendors, building brand exposure through interviews, and facilitating meetings or introductions to banks that could help with growth. There’s also vendor classes in the leadup to Frizz Fest that feature more seasoned operators like Hunt teaching newcomers the keys to being successful.
Hughes says they cover “the little things you don’t normally think about,” such as having extra batteries to keep devices juiced up, as well as how to design an engaging setup and having ways to gather customer contact information.
“In that sense, it’s teaching our businesses how to retain customers and keep customers throughout the year,” she says.
Hunt recalls feeling nervous about presenting when she was first asked to do so a few years ago, but the experience grew into a new way for her business to make revenue and increase its visibility.
“Since presenting that to the vendors of Frizz Fest, I’ve taken it on the road,” she says. “I’ve done vendor trainings with other organizations, and it was because of them that I was able to do something like that.”
More recent additions to Frizz Fest’s Blooming Business Market also feel the support. This was the second year Usha.nga founder Moraa Nyaribo had a booth for her bespoke brass, copper, and aluminum jewelry.
She says Frizz Fest was the first festival she attended in St. Louis after arriving to the city in 2022, and always had an eye toward participating in it.
“I was just inspired by how unapologetically Black, beautiful, extra [it was],” Nyaribo says. “It was such a celebration of Black joy.”
At that time Nyaribo wasn’t yet running her business full-time and says an event as big as Frizz Fest “felt almost unreachable.” But after meeting the festival operators at a different market, she broke in last year and posted one of her highest grossing weekends of the year.
“It was our first time in front of this big crowd that we’ve been looking forward to being a part of,” Nyaribo says. “It was also very reaffirming as a business, because we met so many beautiful Black women or Black men who came in and found a piece with us and have continued being customers with us through the rest of the year.”
Nyaribo says this year was even better in terms of traction, with a few of her products fully selling out before the end of the event.
“Having done markets for the past three years, I would say they are definitely hands-down one of the best people to work with, just because of how much care they put into ensuring us vendors have food, water, a break from [the] tent to use the bathroom,” she says. “Being really thoughtful about little things that could make your day go just slightly better.”
Nyaribo adds that attention extends well after Frizz Fest. She says Frizzy by Nature recently included her wares in a promotional box sent to podcasters Sherri Shepherd & Kym Whitley of Two Funny Mamas. “They’re always plugging us,” Nyaribo says.
Hunt is similarly appreciative.
“For them to put on this huge festival and still support us throughout the entire year, when they have their own lives going on too, it’s really commendable,” she says. “People who look like us don’t always get a lot of support, whether that’s like grants or people wanting to shop with us or letting us into their spaces.” Of the organizers, she adds, “They’re helping fight for us too, helping us get to where we want to be, whether that’s opening a brick and mortar, or being able to vend at another huge festival.”
Frizzy by Nature’s Hughes says she looks to convene resources such as banks and lawyers to ensure the businesses are set up for success.
“Our forte is creating these spaces, but also creating these partnerships with other great organizations that offer resources that we don’t necessarily provide, but we can be the bridge that builds connections,” she says.
Hughes adds it’s worth doing for the success of the Black-owned businesses in general.
“We are all connected,” she says. “It’s just important that we are helping each other as a whole, rather than just for personal gain. I think that is what is going to make the world be a better place.”
