Transcription

Jaha: Hey guys, it's your girl, Jaha Knight and I am here with Eventeny to talk about our black girl coloring books, our black girl games, and all the amazing products that we have at Dakari Moon.

Voiceover: This is Dakari Moon. They're making a space for black women that is just extraordinary, beautiful, and empowering. Let's go through some of their products. 

Jaha: Black girl coloring books are important to me and to our product line. Black girl products are because there's not a ton of representation for black women in the world, especially in the space of fantasy and dreams. And I figured it would be a really nice concept to create art that shows us in different ways but also allows us the benefits of relaxation and getting rid of anxiety and stress because we carry a lot and we don't even realize we're carrying it. And then came along the games. So we have the black girl board games here. So the black girl games set has the black girl crosswords, the word searches and the black girl board games and those come together and it's amazing how many people love these games. Once we started putting them out, it was like, oh, I need that, I need that. And it brings you back to that nostalgia space of where you were when you were growing up and you saw your mom doing a crossword or your grandmother, or you see yourself coloring at a table.It kind of ties it all back and brings that familiarity back for black women. And that was one of the things that I wanted to focus on when it comes to our self care and self love journey. 

Voiceover: One of their coolest products is the Melanin manifesto.

Jaha: Melanin manifesto. Inside this is the planner. There's a journal, and then there's a notebook. And inside of the planner, I wrote my Melanin manifesto. My manifesto which is I am a poem. It's a poem that I wrote just to give women an idea of what it's like to create their own manifesto. And then there's space in there for them to write their own. I have space in there for quarterly goals in different categories of their lives. And then it's a monthly, weekly and a daily spread within that same planner. And then there's the journal. That journal is so beautiful because inside of it there are coloring sheets, their quotes, their prompts, and then there are pages where you can just write all of your ideas, your dreams, your goals, anything that you want to talk about in that journal. And then the notebook is definitely something that you could just take somewhere and write down some quick facts or whatever it is that you need. 

Voiceover: The Melanin manifesto actually came first because that's how Dakari Moon started.

Jaha: So I used to be a teacher and on my decision day of deciding to leave the education space, I started drawing her and I was just doodling. I was in a staff meeting, just doodling in my iPad. And I started thinking, what are all the powerful things that we want to say to each other when we see each other? Black women have a thing. If we walk into a room and we're the only ones there, we seek each other out. It's just a knowing. Just like, I see you, Sis, that kind of thing. And I was like, what would I want to say to that woman if I never got to speak to her? And these are all of the manifestos, all the dreams, all the ideas, all the positive affirmations I have to give to other black women. So I drew her first, and then I said, well, if I have her, she got to have sisters. And so then I drew the other two as a follow up. And then we come in so many different shades and shapes, and we have so many different concepts of who we are as women. I wanted to put all of that in those different ones. And there's actually a fourth one, and she's pregnant, but I haven't gotten to her yet to flesh out her product. 

Voiceover: Then it was just a matter of getting in front of the right audience. 

Jaha: I believe going to the events and vending you tend to form an audience you get to see even in your wildest dreams, like the people that you thought would not support your stuff actually do support your stuff. I thought initially that all my clients would be black. That's all I'm thinking all my clients. And that's just not true. I think we have almost an even split of black customers to customers that are not black supporting our products. So understanding your target audience is really a big deal when you're doing an event, recapping after that event and thinking through, okay, what went well? What didn't go well? What do I need to do now? Those three questions help you refocus and help you to understand what was good at that event, what you needed more of, what needed to change. Maybe it's the products. Maybe it's the event that you did that did not necessarily blend with the products you're offering. There's a lot of different factors that go into choosing to do anything. Yeah, that's how I started growing my confidence by thinking through the buyer's journey and then figuring out how I needed to serve my audience. 

Voiceover: Dakari Moon. Serving up empowerment and space for black women. We're proud to be a partner because at Eventeny, we know where the artists go.