Ashley Harmon of Mela Vitamins is Empowering Women With Inclusive Supplements
Written by: Deepa Somasunderam
@Mela Vitamins
On her journey to breaking into the wellness industry.
The Foundery: BIPOC Innovators Shaping our World
The world of beauty is brimming with cultural richness, with ancient wisdom from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean shaping everything from ingredients to rituals. Yet, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) founders often go unseen in the mainstream beauty industry. The Foundery changes that narrative.
Here, we celebrate the visionary entrepreneurs of color transforming beauty, wellness and lifestyle on a global scale. Discover their stories, groundbreaking brands, and the inspiration they bring to the industry. Get ready to be empowered, enlightened, and introduced to the future of beauty – one innovative founder at a time.
Ashley Harmon is a founder with a personal mission and so naturally she has a very personal story behind launching a wellness company that makes supplements for melanated people, Mela Vitamins. Ashley Harmon had a busy and successful career before she launched Mela Vitamins - restructuring and scaling the AfroTech brand, seven years at PricewaterhouseCoopers and even scaling a travel startup.
She started making her own vitamins because of her own medical requirements combined with an affordability issue - the list of supplements provided by her doctor were just too expensive for the long-term. This led to her creating her own supplement company after COVID-19 hit and she talks to us about the challenges she faced and how she is building her brand.
On making her own vitamins
I have actually been making my own supplements for over a decade.
I started feeling really sick in college - I was struggling with chronic fatigue, digestion issues and skin breakouts. I spent months going to different doctors appointments trying to figure out what was wrong with my body.
I finally found a naturopathic doctor that was able to correctly diagnose Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and a Vitamin D deficiency. I tried the prescription medication route, but had terrible side effects. The doctor recommended this mix of supplements that did end up working, but cost over $150 a month.
I decided that I could do better and really take charge of my health, so I set out to make my own supplements. I spent years ordering different ingredients and testing different formulas until I found a mix that worked.
On building a business
@Mela Vitamins
While I enjoyed making supplements for myself, I didn’t plan on creating a business around it.
Fast forward to when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I experienced firsthand how my family and friends and communities of color were disproportionately impacted by the disease. Leading health organizations released studies linking Vitamin D deficiency to increased risk of severe COVID-19 and other diseases like diabetes and dementia.
They also estimated that 76-90% of melanated people are Vitamin D deficient. This is due to several factors, the most common being that melanin impacts our body’s ability to absorb Vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D deficiency is also linked to other diseases and health risks that impact our community like Breast Cancer and Dementia.
I started looking for multivitamins I could recommend to my family, and I could not find any that had sufficient levels of Vitamin D, that were high-quality and that were affordable. In the $40 billion/year supplement industry, there were no companies prioritizing our health.
This is what inspired me to create Mela Vitamins, a wellness company formulating supplements to meet the unique nutritional needs of melanated people.
“When we first launched, we spent the first year in business just conducting consumer focus groups and collaborating with healthcare providers to understand what women want out of a multivitamin, and what nutrients melanated bodies need. We utilized this data to formulate and manufacture our Daily Essentials Multivitamin for Women, which provides consumers with their daily dose of vitamins, probiotics and adaptogens in just two capsules a day to help them feel and look their best. ”
On the challenges she has faced
I absolutely love the work we are doing at Mela Vitamins, and the amazing community we have built, but it has definitely been challenging. It is difficult to create a new path and niche in a billion-dollar industry that does not prioritize melanated people.
I do not look like most wellness company founders, and I did not start with a big financial backing. It was challenging to find business and manufacturing partners, but we pushed through.
Now we continue to grow our community of supporters while changing the narrative and making space for people of color in the wellness and supplement industries.
On her mission
@Mela Vitamins
Our mission is to create innovative products that help make beauty and wellness more equitable, accessible and effective for our community.
When we first launched, we spent the first year in business just conducting consumer focus groups and collaborating with healthcare providers to understand what women want out of a multivitamin, and what nutrients melanated bodies need.
We utilized this data to formulate and manufacture our Daily Essentials Multivitamin for Women, which provides consumers with their daily dose of vitamins, probiotics and adaptogens in just two capsules a day to help them feel and look their best.
Our multivitamin is designed to help consumers take an inside-out approach to beauty and wellness, and provides extra support for key areas like stress management, skin health and hormone balance.
On the safety of the products
We want to improve health and happiness in communities of color, and we cannot do that if our products are not safe. There are several ways that we manage safety and testing during our manufacturing process.
We manufacture all of our products in the US with our FDA-registered manufacturing partner using established Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines.
We also utilize both in-house and nationally recognized third-party testing labs to check for microbes, heavy metals and other contaminants as well as to certify our products gluten free.
On building trust in the brand
We also focus on transparency and education. This is a new type of product, so we spend a lot of time partnering with wellness and healthcare professionals to discuss the unique nutritional needs of people of color, the benefits of vitamins and other health risks in our community.
We also want to help reduce the number of supplements you need to take in a day by offering all-in-one solutions that provide a foundation to holistic wellness and health.
Additionally, we listen to every single piece of customer feedback and continue to find ways to improve how our business operates to provide the best possible experience.
Keep Reading: The Essential Guide to Multivitamins for Black & Brown Communities
