Business owner Zainabou Thiam, left, and a friend model waist beads and bracelets sold by Sunu Body. (Photo courtesy of Sunu Body)
Zainabou Thiam has spent the last two years honing her product offerings and branding as she prepares to scale her business for a larger audience.
Which is impressive, considering she hasn’t graduated high school yet.
The eighteen-year-old Woonsocket resident was a sophomore at Cumberland High School when she founded Sunu Body, an online company carrying authentic West African jewelry and skincare products. In February of 2022, her mother returned from a trip to Senegal with waist beads — a traditional West African jewelry item worn around the waist — for Thiam and her friends. Thiam was able to sell some of the sets over social media, and she asked her mother to pick up more items on her next trip. By June of that year, she’d created a Shopify account and started hosting a table at local vendor markets.
“I think my first day I made close to $200,” she says. “I was working minimum wage making at the time $11.50 [an hour]. It would take me a week to make $200, so to be able to make that in a day, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I cannot go back to working. I need to keep doing this.’”
Today, Thiam is a senior at the Met School in Providence, where she’s enrolled in the school’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She enjoys learning alongside other young entrepreneurs and participating in local and national entrepreneurship competitions with the support of her mentors. Last year, she was the New England winner for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge and placed third in the Lieutenant Governor’s Entrepreneurship Challenge. She also placed first in her school’s entrepreneurship competition as well as the SkillsUSA RI Championship.
“They gave me the opportunity to pursue my interests, which is something I never really had before,” she says of her high school.
The company’s products range from jewelry, including beaded bracelets, anklets and waist beads, to skincare products. The African net sponge — a traditional netted bath sponge known as a sapo in Senegal — is her top-selling product, closely followed by the African black soap. Thiam says a majority of her customers are members of the African diaspora who use her products as a way to connect with their heritage. Her own parents emigrated from Senegal in the 1980s and ’90s.
Thiam with a shipment of net sponges. (Photo courtesy of Sunu Body)
“As a first generation, I’ve even felt that yearning for home. So these products are really able to connect with a piece of ourselves,” she says.
Along with connecting her to her roots, the business venture has also broadened her horizons. Last year, she traveled to Palm Springs, California, to attend Ernst and Young’s Strategic Growth Forum and address the crowd as the company’s Youth Entrepreneur of the Year for New England. She’s also spoken both locally and internationally with other budding young entrepreneurs and plans to continue hosting workshops for teens interested in entrepreneurship for her senior project.
“It’s not just me succeeding. It’s all of us — to be able to build generational wealth in our communities as well as giving us the opportunity to see ourselves in a higher place,” she says.
“Sunu” means “our” in her family’s native Wolof, a phrase Thiam says speaks to the inclusivity of her business. With graduation approaching, she’s weighing her options for business school and making plans to expand the company and add additional products such as shea butter. She eventually hopes to reach six figures and employ artisans in Senegal full-time rather than contracting for products. She also plans to continue her efforts to educate other Black female entrepreneurs. Though she feels supported by other Black woman business owners in Rhode Island, she says, those role models don’t extend all the way to the top in the business community.
“I’ve surrounded myself with other Black woman[-owned] small businesses and they’re so supportive, but in big companies, I don’t see them,” she says. “My first year of entrepreneurship was scary, but I had so many mentors and women who held my hand and gave me assurance that it’s all going to be OK. And I want to continue that. I don’t want to lose those connections. I just really hope there’s space for us as we grow.”
To learn more about Sunu Body or shop products, visit sunubody.com. For those who prefer to shop in person, Thiam will have products available for sale at a vendor fair at Providence College on Saturday, Feb. 24, from 6 to 8 p.m.
RELATED ARTICLES
Support Local Black-Owned Businesses
Support Women-Owned Businesses in Rhode Island
Sweat Your Way to a Fit Body and Mind with These Local Fitness Studios
