Women-Owned Brands Worth Your Attention—and Your Dollars—this International Women’s Day
There is a certain kind of woman who looks at what doesn’t exist yet and thinks: I’ll build it.
Every International Women’s Day, I dedicate this space to her. Not to empowerment as a buzzword, but to the real, lived, sometimes beautifully messy work of women entrepreneurs who are creating meaning alongside revenue—and refusing to do it quietly.
This year, I’m introducing you to eight founders from my community and network who are doing exactly that. From luxury handbags crafted by hand in Spain to leak-proof nursing bras born from postpartum frustration, each of these women saw a gap and chose to fill it—on their own terms.
Read on, shop intentionally, and share their names. Because the most powerful thing we can do for women in business is simple: show up for them.
What Makes a Woman-Owned Brand Worth Supporting?
Before we dive in, let’s talk about why conscious consumers are increasingly seeking out women-owned businesses to support—not just on March 8th for International Women’s Day or Women’s History Month, but year-round.
Research consistently shows that female entrepreneurs are underfunded, underleveraged, and underrepresented across virtually every industry. Women of color face these barriers at an even greater scale, with limited access to capital and fewer pathways into traditional business ownership. And yet, women-led businesses outperform their counterparts in revenue growth, team culture, and product innovation. The gap isn’t talent. It’s access.
The economic impact of closing that gap is staggering. When we choose to spend our dollars with women-owned businesses, we’re doing more than shopping. We’re redistributing economic power—and that ripple effect extends far beyond our own closets, homes, and daily rituals. Supporting women entrepreneurs means investing in stronger communities, more diverse leadership positions, and a world where the next generation of founders sees themselves reflected in the brands around them.
These eight founders are proof that when women build, the whole world benefits.
1. Deseri | DESERI — Luxury Handbags, Handmade in Spain
Founder: Deseri
Category: Fashion & Accessories
Business Type: Black-Owned, Luxury
Shop DESERI → deseri.com
There’s something quietly revolutionary about a Black woman creating a luxury handbag brand that refuses to compromise on quality or accessibility. That’s exactly what Deseri did when she pivoted from a career in education to build DESERI—a line of signature handbags handmade in Spain that are as elegant as they are functional.
Each piece is crafted with artisanal care, designed to reflect the layered, dynamic life of a modern woman. DESERI isn’t just selling bags—she’s selling the belief that every woman deserves to carry something beautiful, something lasting, something made with intention.
What I love most about DESERI? Deseri didn’t just build a bag brand—she built a legacy. As one of the Black entrepreneurs redefining what luxury looks like from the inside out, every handcrafted piece is a quiet declaration that Black women belong in luxury spaces—not as consumers of someone else’s vision, but as the architects of their own. If you’ve ever felt like luxury wasn’t made with you in mind, DESERI is here to change that narrative.
2. Emily Willett | HEIRÉE — Clean, Elevated Hand Care
Founder: Emily Willett
Category: Beauty & Wellness
Business Type: Self-Funded, Clean Beauty
Discover HEIRÉE → heiree.com
Frustrated by the lack of clean, effective, and elevated options in the hand care space, Emily Willett founded HEIRÉE in August 2025 with one hero product: The Cuticle Pen. She formulates the products herself, prioritizing organic ingredients and high-performing botanicals with a focus on hormonal health—because what we put on our bodies matters just as much as what we put in them.
HEIRÉE is what happens when a decade of brand-building experience meets a personal problem that nobody else was solving well enough. What I love most about Emily right now? She’s building out loud.
She’s committed to posting every single day until HEIRÉE reaches $200 million—and she’s inviting all of us to witness the journey. Follow along and cheer her on. She’s the kind of founder who makes you believe in your own dreams just by watching her chase hers.
3. Sydney Attis & Mikayla Garcia | Just Call Me Shirley — A Fun Twist on a Classic Sip
Founders: Sydney Attis & Mikayla Garcia
Category: Food & Beverage
Business Type: Co-Founded, Women-Owned
Sip along with them → drink-shirley.com
What happens when two sorority sisters, marketing minds, and best friends decide to stop building other people’s brands and start building their own? You get Just Call Me Shirley—and the beverage industry hasn’t been the same since.
Sydney and Mikayla met at university, launched a social media marketing agency together after graduating in 2021, and, somewhere along the way, realized their skills deserved a playground entirely their own. The beverage space became that playground: a place to experiment, innovate, and bring a fresh (and fun) spin to a classic favorite.
Their story is a love letter to the power of female friendship in entrepreneurship. When two people truly trust each other’s vision, there’s no limit to what they can create.
4. Lisa Simone Richards | Pearl Spark Pages — Journals for the Founder Who Doubts Herself
Founder: Lisa Simone Richards
Category: Stationery & Personal Development
Business Type: Women-Owned, Mission-Driven
Explore Pearl Spark Pages → pearlsparkpages.com
Lisa Simone Richards spent two decades as a publicist helping women-led startups gain visibility and confidence in the marketplace. Somewhere along the way, she realized she was fighting the same invisible battle she’d watched so many of her clients fight: imposter syndrome.
That realization became Pearl Spark Pages, a luxury stationery brand built on a beautifully simple premise: that the way we talk to ourselves shapes everything. The flagship product, the Female Founders Journal, is designed to help women entrepreneurs move from self-doubt to bold self-belief, one page at a time.
For any woman in business who has ever asked herself, “Who am I to do this?” — Lisa’s answer, pressed into every page of these journals, is clear: You are exactly who this was made for.
5. Dani Kagan | Mave & Chez — Luxury Ergonomic Slippers for Women
Co-Founder: Dani Kagan
Category: Footwear & Lifestyle
Business Type: 7-Figure E-Commerce, Dragons’ Den Featured
Shop Mave & Chez → maveandchez.com
Before you scroll past “slippers,” let me stop you—because Dani Kagan and Mave & Chez are doing something genuinely innovative in a category most people overlook.
Dani is a serial entrepreneur, podcast host, and mom of two who identified a real gap in the market: women deserved a luxury ergonomic slipper that was as supportive as it was beautiful. The result is the world’s first product of its kind—and the market agreed. Mave & Chez secured a deal on Dragons’ Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), earned a feature in Vogue, and is now carried in boutiques and luxury hotels across North America.
But what I love most about Dani isn’t the deal or the press—it’s the mission underneath it all. Through her podcast, Raise It Up with Dani Kagan, she’s building a community of women-led entrepreneurs centered on bold leadership at the intersection of entrepreneurship and motherhood. She wants to help millions of women step confidently and pain-free into their days, in every sense of the word.
6. Bianka Krausch | Veganist — The Conscious Marketplace
Founder: Bianka Krausch
Category: Sustainable Living & E-Commerce
Business Type: Mission-Driven, Conscious Commerce
Explore Veganist → veganist.com
After 20 years in the agency world, Bianka Krausch made a decision that’s both deeply personal and unmistakably necessary: she built Veganist, a conscious marketplace for brands that are good for you and good for the planet.
As a 10+ year vegan and lifelong vegetarian, Bianka has always made buying decisions with animal welfare and planetary impact at the center. Veganist is the physical manifestation of that value system — a curated space where conscious consumers can shop with confidence, knowing that the brands they’re supporting share their values.
Bianka is also an investor in PLHYDE, a vegan leather brand made from 80% fruit and vegetable waste, with a shoe line launching soon. She’s not just building a marketplace; she’s building an ecosystem.
7. Sarah Kallile | Lunnie — Leak-Proof Nursing Bras Built for Real Moms
Founder: Sarah Kallile
Category: Maternity & Postpartum Intimates
Business Type: Bootstrapped, Award-Winning, WBE Certified
Shop Lunnie → lunnie.com
I have to be transparent: this one hits close to home. As a new mom myself, I know exactly what Sarah Kallile was feeling when she looked down at her frumpy nursing bra, soaked through again, and thought: we deserve better than this.
She built Lunnie—a community-led intimates brand creating leak-proof, beautifully designed nursing bras—because postpartum bodies aren’t something to hide, manage, or apologize for. They’re something to dress with care, intentionality, and a little bit of beauty.
Lunnie’s patented Leakproof Nursing Bra is 6x more absorbent than leading pads. Sarah bootstrapped the entire company through pitch competitions, earning over $150K in non-dilutive funding and taking home wins, including the 2024 Dayton Startup Week pitch competition and the 2021 Female Founder Collective pitch competition. She’s a mom of three daughters. She built this for them, and for all of us.
8. Yvonne Liao | Yvonne Liao NYC — Shoes That Tell Your Story
Founder: Yvonne Liao
Category: Footwear & Design
Business Type: Women-Owned, Independent Designer
Shop Yvonne Liao NYC → yvonneliaonyc.com
Yvonne Liao grew up in a conservative Asian environment where expressing oneself through clothing was often met with criticism. She found her workaround early: shoes. People could judge her outfit all they wanted—but her shoes? Her shoes were hers. They were her confidence, her armor, her quiet rebellion.
That origin story is now a full brand. Yvonne is a New York City-based designer and founder of her eponymous footwear label, creating fun, vibrant, and genuinely comfortable shoes that take women from day to night without asking them to choose between beauty and livability. After years of navigating the streets of New York City—and struggling to find footwear that was both expressive and kind to her feet—she decided to design what didn’t exist yet. Her capsule collection launched late last year, the result of years of learning the craft of shoemaking and refining her vision.
What I love most about Yvonne is that she’s building more than a shoe brand—she’s building a community. Her monthly newsletter, In Her Shoes, spotlights women entrepreneurs and explores what it’s really like to walk their paths. Because Yvonne believes that behind every pair of shoes is a woman’s story—where she came from, and where she’s going.
That belief? It’s stitched into every single sole.
The Thread That Connects These Women-Owned Businesses
Reading back through these eight founders, I’m struck by something they all share—not just that they’re women building businesses, but why they’re doing it.
Every single one of these female entrepreneurs saw a gap. Not just a market opportunity, but a real, felt absence of something that should exist. A bag made for the woman who deserves luxury. Organic ingredients in a cuticle pen that doesn’t ask you to compromise. A slipper that honors the body you live in. A journal that talks back to your inner critic. A nursing bra that says: you are not invisible.
This is what I believe conscious entrepreneurship looks like. It starts with a wound, a frustration, a need—and it transforms that raw material into something that serves others. The economic impact of that kind of building ripples outward in ways we can’t always measure, but we can always feel.
On International Women’s Day, Women’s History Month, and every day after it, this is the kind of building I want to celebrate.
How to Support These Founders Beyond March 8th
Celebrating women-owned businesses to support shouldn’t be a once-a-year conversation. Here are a few meaningful ways small business owners in your network benefit from your ongoing support:
- Shop with intention — Choose women-owned brands when you have the option, and tell your friends about them
- Follow and engage — A comment, share, or save costs nothing and means everything to a small brand’s algorithm
- Leave reviews — Honest product reviews are one of the most powerful gifts you can give a founder
- Refer them — Word of mouth remains the highest-converting marketing tool in existence
- Invest if you can — Whether it’s buying a product or becoming an actual investor, put money behind the missions you believe in
Copyright 2026 – Simply Ashley Graham – All Rights Reserved
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