STARTING A BRAND is no easy feat – and for Khadijah Ward, her business journey has been nothing short of a rollercoaster. “The overall vision for Dark Girl Boss is for it to be a global brand,” she says. “I want to be able to support women and girls economically all over the world.”

Dark Girl Boss is a brand and soon-to-be registered charity, which aims to encourage women and girls to be economically independent and start their own businesses. Alongside the brand, a self-titled book is also to be released which will feature stories of black women who overcame struggles to be successful in business – something that Ward knows all too well.

“The book features not just my stories but other women’s’ stories and there are some powerful ones in there about women who’ve been through some difficult things in their life and worked to overcome them and now they’re very successful. It’s about economic empowerment for women and a celebration of unity, self reliance and collective black wealth.”

Ward is from Wanstead, east London and of Barbadian descent. She studied social policy at university, and worked with the Commission for Racial Equality and the civil service as a counsellor prior to writing her self-help book Black Sterling in 2017.

“I lost my father in 2015 to prostate cancer and I went through a terrible time,” recalls Ward. “So I went to Barbados just to reflect and was thinking about immigrating. I was there for six months and it was on the beaches of Barbados that I had the idea for Black Sterling and Dark Girl Boss in 2016.”

One year later, Ward published Black Sterling during Black History Month. “It took me about three months to write. After that, I decided to launch Dark Girl Boss.”

Ward registered her brand with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in September 2018, stating she wanted to use it for printed matter, cosmetics and clothing.

However, she received a letter of objection from lawyers on behalf of Hugo Boss in November. In the letter, it stipulated that she stop using the name, withdraw the application and never apply for a trademark containing the word ‘boss’ again. However, Ward decided to not back down and took her story to the media – a move which may have assisted in changing the outcome as she announced that Dark Girl Boss became a registered trademark and was accepted by the IPO office in December 2018.

“I was absolutely elated when Dark Girl Boss was officially a registered trademark, because I thought to myself I shouldn’t have been going through that situation in the first place.” says Ward.

“It just demonstrated to me that they [IPO] believe what I did – that it [Dark Girl Boss] didn’t have anything to do with Hugo Boss. There was no relevance with the two because my trademark is actually my own face and my hair and it just says ‘Dark Girl Boss’. I don’t understand how that could be muddled with Hugo Boss – yes it has the word ‘boss’ in it, but that’s the only similarity.”

While appealing to the media may have helped somewhat, Ward shares that the objection from Hugo Boss still put a major halt on the progress of the brand. “Some people dropped out because they thought ‘Oh God I don’t want any issue with Hugo Boss’. I had to put my launch on hold, publishing deals, investors – it still had an affect and it still could do.

While Ward has her reservations, she is content on moving full steam ahead with her brand, and has big ideas for 2019. “This year I want to launch the brand and register it as a charity so I can have a structured set up. Also, next month I will be going to Sierra Leone and taking Black Sterling and Dark Girl Boss over there. I’m going across the Caribbean and African diaspora to promote both brands.”