Ami Colé built one of indie beauty's most culturally resonant brands before closing in 2025 — its story is both a blueprint for community-led beauty marketing and a frank case study in the structural pressures facing minority-founded DTC brands.
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See all ads on AdLibrary →Ami Colé was a New York-based clean beauty brand founded in 2021 by Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye, designed specifically for melanin-rich skin. Distributed through Sephora and backed by investors including Greycroft, G9 Ventures, and L'Oréal, the brand raised over $3 million and became a celebrated example of culturally specific inclusive beauty. Ami Colé earned fans including Kelly Rowland and Mindy Kaling. Despite strong brand equity and critical acclaim, the brand announced closure in July 2025, citing unsustainable market conditions, rising tariffs, DEI funding rollbacks, and economic pressures on indie beauty brands. Founder N'Diaye-Mbaye subsequently joined Skims as EVP of Beauty and Fragrance. Also searched as Ami.
Ami Colé's advertising was built on cultural specificity rather than broad inclusivity messaging. Rather than positioning as 'makeup for everyone,' the brand explicitly centered melanin-rich skin — acknowledging the gap in beauty retail where foundation ranges ended at medium-tan and lip colors were formulated for lighter complexions. This specificity created intense resonance within its target community and generated organic word-of-mouth that no amount of paid spend could have replicated. Founder Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye's Senegalese-American background and personal connection to the brand's mission made founder-led content feel authentic rather than performative. You can view Ami Colé's historical ad creative at AdLibrary.
Instagram was Ami Colé's primary brand-building platform, where its warm, natural-finish aesthetic for deep skin tones was visually distinctive in a feed dominated by lighter complexion editorial beauty. The brand's photography — models with rich melanin showing true product effect on their skin tones — was itself a form of advertising, filling a visual gap that the industry had historically ignored. TikTok provided a community engagement layer where founder N'Diaye-Mbaye participated in beauty discourse and product education, building personal connection between founder and consumer that strengthened brand loyalty.
Ami Colé's copy centered on seeing and being seen: 'made for melanin-rich skin,' 'your natural beauty, amplified,' and 'clean beauty that actually works on us.' The brand's voice was warm, direct, and community-oriented — addressing its audience as a community member, not a consumer segment. Product names (Skin-Enhancing Tint, Lip Treatment Oil) emphasized enhancement over coverage, aligning with the broader clean-girl aesthetic trend while centering it specifically on melanin-rich skin. This specificity made every ad feel personally relevant to its target customer in a way that general 'for all skin tones' messaging cannot achieve.
Ami Colé's arc — from celebrated launch to VC-backed growth to closure — offers two distinct lessons. On brand building: cultural specificity outperforms demographic targeting. The brand's explicit focus on melanin-rich skin created deeper loyalty than any broad-market inclusivity campaign could generate. On brand sustainability: awareness and brand equity are necessary but insufficient conditions for DTC survival. Ami Colé had both in abundance, yet structural factors — rising tariffs, DEI funding pullback, indie beauty margin compression — made the business unsustainable. For marketers, the brand's closure is a reminder that marketing excellence cannot substitute for unit economics, and that culturally resonant brands in underserved categories deserve structural support beyond early-stage VC.
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