As Melissa Butler reacts to The Lip Bar backlash we unpack how Black brands have been faring since the boycott against Target began.
The Lip Bar is facing backlash from some consumers who are questioning whether the Black-owned beauty brand is moving away from the community that helped build it.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Melissa Butler, the brand’s founder and CEO, took to Threads to address the discourse, shedding light on just why she can’t simply break up with the retailer.
“Yes, The Lip Bar is in Target. Are we asking you to shop there?! NO!” she began in a lengthy post.
“Even with loss sales in that channel, they are still our largest retail partner,” the beauty CEO continued. “We cannot simply exit Target, as we will not be able to take the financial hit.”
She explained that, instead, the brand increased its marketing budget “significantly” to bolster its support on its own website, and other retailers like Amazon and Walmart. She also noted the brand has been trying to get into Ulta for years.
She added, “We can only exit Target if we can afford to exit Target. Another viable retailer could do that! We’ve tried.”
Her response arrives as Black-owned brands continue navigating the fallout from the ongoing Target boycott, which began in January 2025 after the retailer announced sweeping changes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. While some businesses have reported significant losses, others have managed to grow or have made the difficult decision to walk away from the retailer altogether. Meanwhile, Target has continued courting beauty entrepreneurs, including Black-owned businesses, with new opportunities to get their products onto its shelves.
The latest controversy surrounding The Lip Bar began after a clip featuring the company’s vice president of marketing discussing plans to reach shoppers beyond its core audience of millennial Black women circulated on TikTok and Threads. To many Black women consumers, the comments suggested that a brand they had supported for years was now looking elsewhere for its next wave of customers. Butler, who founded The Lip Bar in 2012 and was famously rejected on “Shark Tank” before landing a deal with Target in 2018, admitted the VP could have chosen her words better but pushed back on the notion they were leaving Black women behind.
“The Lip Bar has always centered Black women,” she wrote in an additional post.
“We’ve done HBCU Collections, given away $40k to Black owned businesses, done countless community events, teacher events, etc,” she continued, writing, “That isn’t changing. That also never goes viral lol. But as a Black-owned business, please know that it is not Anti-Black to sell products to non-Black people.”
“Black consumers spend their money across the aisle everyday, but Black Brands are expected to only sell to Black people? Why do our brands have a ceiling?” she asked.
As The Lip Bar has worked to offset declining sales at Target, Butler has also been vocal about the retailer’s DEI rollback, publicly criticizing the decision and saying she has spoken directly with its leadership about the major predicament it has created for Black-owned businesses. By October of last year, The Lip Bar reported that its sales at Target had fallen by roughly 30% to 40%. However, the beauty brand was projecting a 40% increase in overall sales that year, following an expansion of its product offerings and efforts to reach customers through other channels.
But The Lip Bar is hardly the only Black-owned business to have spent the past year reconsidering its relationship with Target, though the financial consequences and decisions made by founders have varied. Also in October 2025, Tabitha Brown revealed that her Donna’s Recipe hair-care line had taken a major financial hit amid the boycott. Brown, who had previously expressed disappointment with Target’s DEI rollback, was among the Black entrepreneurs who warned that a boycott of the retailer could also hurt the independent businesses selling their products there.
Then there’s April Showers, founder of Afro Unicorn, who stopped promoting her products at Target last year after hearing customer concerns, a decision that led to a six-figure financial loss. By the end of 2025, her products were no longer on the retailer’s shelves.
Even so, Showers has expressed support for other Black-owned brands that have chosen to remain in Target, recognizing that walking away isn’t necessarily financially feasible for every business.
There have also been competing messages about the boycott’s future. In March 2026, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, who helped lead one of the most prominent campaigns against Target, announced that his organized boycott was ending. However, calls to boycott the retailer, including those from organizers local to the big-box giant’s headquarters in Minneapolis, such as Nekima Armstrong, have continued, along with criticism of its DEI decisions.
All the while, Target has continued to court new brands, including Black-owned ones. Earlier this month, the retailer introduced its new Beauty Studio concept, bringing additional beauty brands into its stores. Among them is Glamazon Beauty, founded by makeup artist Kim Baker, who has spoken enthusiastically about the opportunity while acknowledging the concerns surrounding Target’s DEI decisions.
For entrepreneurs like Baker, national retail distribution is a huge milestone that can provide the visibility and consumer access that smaller brands often spend years trying to find. But what we’re learning from others, including Butler and Showers, is that having the financial strength to continue controlling your brand’s future, even as elements outside your control arise, is the milestone to strive for.
More About:Lifestyle
Weekly New Episodes
Stream Now
