We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Adeola Wright. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Adeola below.

Adeola, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The idea for Julo shop actually started back in 2016, long before the company officially launched. At the time, I attended a Black business expo where Maggie Anderson spoke about her “Year of Buying Black” journey and the challenges she faced trying to consistently support Black-owned brands. That conversation stayed with me because I realized I had experienced the same thing myself. There were so many amazing Black-owned products, but discovering and shopping them conveniently in one place felt difficult and fragmented.

At that point in my life, I was also reflecting on my own professional experiences. I had spent nearly a decade working in Corporate America in marketing and innovation for a large consumer packaged goods company, and I constantly saw the brilliance and contributions of Black women minimized or overlooked. It became emotionally exhausting. I eventually left, honestly feeling frustrated and wanting to create meaningful change instead of simply talking about the problem.

When I heard Maggie speak, something clicked for me. I realized that instead of only criticizing broken systems, I could help build something better. I wanted to create a retail platform that made it easier for people to intentionally support Black-owned brands while also helping founders gain more visibility and opportunity in an industry that often pushed them aside.

I came up with the name JULO, which means “more than,” because I wanted it to stand against the limiting assumptions people often place on Black businesses and Black-made products. I wanted Julo shop to represent excellence, quality, and possibility.

Interestingly, I didn’t launch the business right away. Like many people with big ideas, I kept asking myself “what if?” and put it aside for a while. Then in 2018, after reading Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes, I decided I was done sitting on ideas I was passionate about. I made a list of 40 things I wanted to accomplish by my 40th birthday, and launching Julo shop was one of them.

In 2020, during one of the most chaotic and uncertain periods in the world, Julo shop officially launched.

What made me believe this business would work was that the demand already existed. Consumers genuinely wanted to support Black-owned businesses, but the experience often lacked convenience and accessibility. At the same time, incredible founders needed stronger retail support, visibility, and infrastructure. Julo shop became the bridge between those two needs.

What excites me most even today is that we are building more than an online store. We are creating access, visibility, opportunity, and community around Black entrepreneurship.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Yes, my name is Adeola Wright, and I’m the founder of Julo.shop, an online retail company focused on making it easier for consumers to discover and shop curated Black-owned brands all in one place.

At Julo shop, we carry products across beauty, personal care, pantry, home, lifestyle, and kids categories, with a strong focus on curation, storytelling, and creating meaningful visibility for Black-owned brands. Our mission is rooted in creating greater access and opportunity for founders while also making the shopping experience more seamless and convenient for consumers.

What makes Julo shop different is that we are not a marketplace. We are an online retail company that is intentionally building an ecosystem designed to help brands grow. We focus heavily on quality, customer trust, merchandising, and community-building because we want customers to feel confident discovering new brands through us.

A major part of the problem we solve is accessibility and visibility. Many consumers genuinely want to support Black-owned businesses but often struggle to discover them consistently in one place. At the same time, many incredible founders are creating high-quality products but face challenges with retail access, awareness, and growth opportunities. Julo shop was created to help bridge that gap.

One thing I’m especially proud of is the community we’ve built over the years. Seeing customers intentionally support Black-owned brands and seeing founders gain new exposure, customers, and opportunities through our platform has been incredibly rewarding. We’ve continued to experience growth each year, which continues to validate the demand for intentional retail spaces.

I’m also proud that the company was built with purpose from the very beginning. For anyone discovering Julo shop for the first time, I want them to know that this work is deeply personal and mission-driven. Every partnership, every product, and every decision is centered around creating meaningful impact, supporting Black entrepreneurs, and building something that helps our community thrive long-term.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We currently sell exclusively through our own website, www.julo.shop. That decision was very intentional because we wanted to create a different kind of shopping experience than what you typically see on large marketplace platforms like Amazon or Etsy.

Many marketplaces operate by allowing almost anyone to sell on the platform, which often means products ship separately from multiple vendors, customer experiences can vary greatly, and there is less overall curation and quality control. While those platforms offer convenience in some ways, we wanted Julo shop to feel more intentional, trusted, and community-centered.

What makes Julo shop different is that we operate as a true retail company and one-stop shop for curated Black-owned brands. We manage inventory directly through our warehouse, which means customers can purchase products from multiple brands in a single order and receive one shipment from us. We handle fulfillment, inventory management, merchandising, and customer experience ourselves rather than relying on individual sellers to manage everything independently.

Another major difference is our level of curation. Every product and every brand added to Julo shop is intentionally selected. We spend a lot of time researching brands, reviewing products, building relationships with founders, and making sure the products align with our standards for quality, presentation, and customer experience. We truly want customers to feel confident shopping with us.

In many ways, we do the discovery and quality-checking work for the customer so they don’t have to. When someone shops on Julo shop, we want them to feel safe, excited, and at peace knowing the brands have been thoughtfully vetted and curated. We are also continuously adding new brands each month so customers can keep discovering incredible Black-owned products across beauty, pantry, personal care, home, lifestyle, and more.

For us, it has never been about simply listing as many products as possible. It’s about building trust, creating visibility for amazing founders, and offering a seamless retail experience that makes supporting Black-owned brands easier and more accessible.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One major pivot I made with Julo shop was evolving how we approached retail partnerships and inventory management as the company began to grow.

As we expanded, I spent a lot of time listening to the realities many emerging Black-owned brands were facing. I realized that while there were so many incredible founders creating high-quality products, many were navigating limited resources, inventory challenges, and barriers to accessing sustainable retail opportunities.

That led me to rethink how Julo shop could continue growing in a way that felt intentional, collaborative, and supportive for both the brands we work with and the customers we serve.

Over time, we refined our retail model to become more infrastructure-driven and partnership-focused. We invested heavily in warehousing, fulfillment operations, onboarding systems, and backend processes that would allow us to support a growing number of brands more efficiently while still maintaining a curated customer experience.

Making that shift required us to rethink many aspects of the business operationally, from logistics and inventory systems to fulfillment workflows and brand onboarding processes. It was a significant transition because we were building systems that could support long-term scale rather than short-term growth.

What I learned through that pivot is that scaling responsibly requires more than great products. It requires strong systems, adaptability, and a willingness to evolve as the needs of your community evolve.

So far, the response has been incredibly positive. We’ve been able to expand the number of brands on the platform, improve operational efficiency, and continue creating a seamless shopping experience for customers while building stronger relationships with our brand partners.

That experience reinforced something important for me as a founder: sometimes growth requires you to let go of the original way you imagined things would work so you can build something even more sustainable for the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.julo.shop
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julo.shop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julo.shop
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/juloshop
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@juloshop
• Other: www.pinterest.com/thejuloshop
  www.tiktok.com/@julo.shop
  https://spoutible.com/JuloShop