Kobi Co.’s advice: Take control of your future FOUNDING PUBLISHER Wes Bergstrom
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Andrew Tellijohn atellijohn@upsizemag.com
FOUNDING EDITOR Beth Ewen bewen@upsizemag.com
DESIGN DIRECTOR Jonathan Hankin jhankin@upsizemag.com
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Dan O’Connell dano@upsizemag.com
PHOTOGRAPHER Tom Dunn tom@tomdunnphoto.com
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fter 28 years at a banking and investment firm, Tasha Harris found herself on the wrong side of yet another management change. “I very quickly went from the golden child to the black sheep,” she recalls. “It became toxic for me. I had to medicate myself to get to work.” So, she walked off the job in October 2019, leaving a six-figure salary and her corporate wardrobe behind. “I was young, Black and a woman in a white man’s world of investments,” she says about her threedecade rise and then abrupt exit. “They had to mail me my stuff.” Five months later the world shut down, both for Harris (right in photo) and her daughter, Kobi Gregory (left). Then a junior in high school, Kobi began making candles to handle her anxiety amid the pandemic. “Pouring candles was her self-care ritual,” Harris says, but it soon became much more. A friend offered space at her farmer’s market table and Kobi’s candles, infused with signature scents and festooned with hand-placed gems along with a curated playlist on each label, became a hit. Kobi Co. was born, with daughter Kobi as CEO and mother Tasha as president and “mom-ager in chief.” Harris turned her former corporate energy onto their own project, rattling off a list of opportunities she sought to work on the business, not in it, as all the experts advise. Target marketing executives worked with the mother-daughter pair in a pro bono rebranding project. Next came a mentor from the Minority Business Growth Alliance, who gave them advice and office space in downtown Minneapolis. Kobi Co. negotiated a lease next door for a storefront and warehouse within months.
UPSIZE NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2023
Harris took part in the Ascend program with the Metropolitan Economic Development Association and met other local women-run companies like Moltron Builders, Nature’s Syrup Beauty and Planting People Growing Justice. When I met her in late September, she had just returned from the orientation for Goldman Sachs’ 12-week accelerator program called One Million Black Women. “We were selected out of 2,000 applicants. We were 150 Black women in cohort four,” she said. “We’re starting to make data-driven decisions” to run the business. "This is a game-changer.” From $55,000 in sales their first full year to six figures last year— she won’t say which six—Kobi Co. is on its way. And are they paying themselves? “Hell yeah,” she exclaims, not to her corporate level but there’s a plan to move salaries up as revenue grows. On a crisp October day at the MartinPatrick3 store in the North Loop—the hottest retailer in town—I saw Kobi and Tasha in action, selling their candles at an event to showcase the makers behind the brands. Kobi was rocking three-foot-long braids and jewels of the constellation Libra on her face. Tasha worked the crowd in a camouflage jacket with empowering slogans, gold chains and a leather fanny pack. Says Kobi, “I’m doing something I love for a bigger purpose. It’s really a blessing to be young and have this lifelong career.” Tasha had told me earlier, “I feel validated and empowered by this thing we’re doing. I want to pass that on. Take control of your future.” There’s an idea worth following, and an inspiring mother-daughter pair showing the way. —Beth Ewen founding editor bewen@upsizemag.com
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