Denver entrepreneur Orion Brown took a huge step toward her company’s next growth stage with a pitch competition victory Wednesday at Denver Startup Week.

Brown beat out three other finalists with her pitch to get $300,000 funding for her company BlackTravelBox to move it to the next stages of manufacturing and distribution. The company sells “TSA friendly hair and skin care” for people of color.

She won $45,000 in products and services, like Amazon Web Services credits, legal advice Brown won the BIPOC (Black indigenous poeple of color) Pitch Competition Tuesday, and $10,000 for that infusion into the personal care products business. That earned her a spot at the finals Wednesday, an event sponsored by VF Venture Foundry.

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“I have to say, I was floored,” Brown said. “Going from working on retail plans this weekend for the business that I wasn’t sure how I was going to get done to having the opportunity to pitch not once, but twice, and winning both is a little surreal. I am incredibly blessed and honored that the Denver startup community has shown me so much love this week.”

Brown, 39, had a 15-year career in corporate America as a professional marketing strategist, and working in the sales and ad tech space. She traveled frequently and discovered it was “a big challenge just to keep up my beauty regimen on the road.”

After so many confiscated jars by the TSA, and wondering “why is this so complicated,” Brown decided to do something about it.

“The reason why, if you look at the travel aisle — if there is one — in your local store, the products that are there just aren’t made for women of color,” she said.

“I felt sure somebody is doing this … but then I started going to industry events, and doing my research online, and I’m like, ‘No. This isn’t anywhere,'” Brown said.

So in 2017 she started BlackTravelBox — not only to go into business for herself and create a company, but to help improve the travel industry for people of color.

“It’s like, how can I help them get the most out of that (travel) experience?” she said. “That’s edifying.”

She registered the business name with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and on nights and weekends started gathering consumer data. She didn’t partner with a manufacturer, but instead formulated “minimally viable products” she could then test with potential consumers. She thought she could then take that data to manufacturers to perfect.

“Ironically, what happened was people were actually loving the products,” she said. “So our products that we sell right now were iterations of that MVP.”

Brown spent many hours at Commons on Champa, 1245 Champa St., Denver’s entrepreneurship hub by the Downtown Denver Partnership. She spent time with Michael Bevis, manager of innovation and entrepreneurship with the Denver Office of Economic Development and Opportunity, who connected her to other entrepreneurs, spaces and community resources.

The company “went live” in October 2018, selling products online at www.theblacktravelbox.com, and Brown quit her corporate job. 

She became frustrated at trying to raise funds, venture capital or even Small Business Administration loans.

“They don’t care what your credit score is, or how much you make,” Brown said. “There’s still a lot of hurdles that are built into the system that just systematically make it difficult. … At the beginning of 2020, I was like, ‘You know what, forget this. I’m not standing in front of another person who’s going to ask if you’ve left the house to travel or why the product is not for them.’ … I’ll just bootstrap it.”

She re-focused her time and energy in 2020 to build the business during the COVID-19 caused pandemic that all but shut down the travel industry.

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In 2021, Brown completed two retail accelerators, one for Target and one for Macy’s. Macy’s actually sold BlackTravelBox products on its shelves for a month this summer as a as a test trial.

“We sold out,” she said. “They’ve invited us back, so we’ll be on Macy’s shelves soon.”

She said the pitch competition win “is a blessing.”

“I really stayed in it because I believe this needs to exist in the world,” Brown said. “That’s super cool.”