Montré Moore spent years managing a $14 million prestige cosmetics department at Neiman Marcus watching brand founders get shut out by red tape, gatekeeping, and unspoken rules about who gets shelf space. Then a night out in downtown LA, searching for a single hair product she couldn&#x27;t find within 45 minutes of a major metro area, became the moment that changed everything.<br><br>That search became AMP Beauty, a platform working to democratize retail access for underrepresented beauty founders. What started as a marketplace and evolved into something more fundamental: a data and technology company that tells brands exactly what &quot;retail-ready&quot; means, and gets them there.<br><br>In this conversation, Montré breaks down what it actually costs to launch a beauty brand, why chemical safety is a structural issue and not a marketing choice, the pivot that 6X&#x27;d AMP&#x27;s revenue, and why she chose Kansas City, not LA, as the next chapter of AMP&#x27;s growth. This is a story about access, infrastructure, and what it takes to change who gets to be seen on the shelf.

She Ran a $14M Beauty Department, Then Watched It Shut Black Founders Out

The Disruption Lab

What happens when someone builds a company that solves a problem that the market was never designed to see? That's the question at the center of this series. Seven founders, seven companies, none of these companies fit the playbook. They don't look like the startups, they get the headlines or the funding, they're not optimizing for the fastest exit or the biggest valuation. They're building in the space between what the market rewards and what communities actually need.

And the question isn't whether what they're building matters, it's whether the systems around them, the capital, the infrastructure and the institutions are designed to let them succeed. This is the Social Venture Studio Founder Series. Seven conversations with founders building at the edge of what innovation looks like when it's designed to serve more than the people writing the checks. I'm Kevin McGinnis, this is The Disruption Lab. Montre, you're walking through downtown LA one evening. You need edge control, which is an essential product for black women.

And you can't find it. One product, one city block. And you saw an entire industry's failure in that moment. What did you see? Well, that's amazing that you know that story. That is definitely the genesis of AMP. My sorority sister came into town and she was looking for a cultural favorite product.

And Angel and I kind of stared at each other like, how do we tell her that you have to go into more of an urban, you know, community? And you know, us being in a high dense metropolitan city that's super diverse. The fact that we had to say like, oh, you have to go 25 minutes, maybe 35, 45 with traffic just to get a product was like an eye awakening moment.

She Ran a $14M Beauty Department, Then Watched It Shut Black Founders Out

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

She Ran a $14M Beauty Department, Then Watched It Shut Black Founders Out

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.