Toronto entrepreneur Betsy Campos founded made-to-order swimwear company ŪNIKA to reimagine the often uncomfortable swimwear shopping experience. Galit Rodan

When Betsy Campos set out to create her Toronto-based company, ŪNIKA Swim, she was determined to turn the swimsuit shopping experience on its ear.

“My main goal has always been to create a safe space where there’s no segregated shopping based on your size,” says. Campos, whose brand specializes in custom swimwear stocked in sizes XS to 4XL. “If two friends that are an XS and a 3XL come to shop in-store, they all shop in the same space.”

Swimwear shopping, she explains, is often an uncomfortable experience for women. The industry has been resistant to making inclusive products for all shapes and sizes, frequently making the experience stressful and rife with insecurity.

Campos reimagined that experience by offering made-to-order swimwear that celebrates every kind of body.

“I was like, ‘what if we created the suit to fit you instead of you trying to fit the suit? What if you didn’t have to compromise to feel confident and feel great in your skin?’”

On top of catering to a wide size spectrum, ŪNIKA also crafts custom swimwear for breastfeeding mothers, people across the gender identity spectrum, and people who have had mastectomies, lumpectomies and burn scars. Campos says her inspiration to start ŪNIKA came from witnessing the restrictive culture around swimwear in North America and how it failed to cater to the bodies of the women she loved.

“I was raised by my mother who is Brazilian, and the culture in North America is very different in terms of what people feel they can wear. If you’re a larger woman, [stores] don’t have that style for you,” she says. “I just never understood why that was, and I thought that there had to be a solution.”

ŪNIKA is just one of the innovative, forward-thinking businesses that have been selected as the most recent 10 recipients of the Visa Canada She’s Next Grant Program. Now in its second year, the program, in collaboration with iFundWomen, supports women entrepreneurs with funding, coaching and peer-to-peer connections.

“At Visa, we know that Canadian small businesses are the backbone of our economy, contributing to over one-third of the GDP,” says Sarah Steele, senior director of small business products at Visa Canada. “But women-owned small businesses have historically struggled with a unique set of challenges and were further impacted by the events of the past two years.”

Steele notes that Visa Canada’s pre-pandemic The State of Canadian Women’s Entrepreneurship Report found that one-third of established women entrepreneurs identified raising funds as a challenge when running a business, while 48 per cent cited a lack of available mentors or advisors as holding them back. “That’s why we’ve introduced programs like the Visa She’s Next Grant Program.”

Several of the recipients in this round of the program have approached their business models like Campos did with ŪNIKA: identifying a specific, niche market that was being underserved.

“One thing we always tell small-business owners is to be yourself. Harness your company’s personality and focus on what makes your business unique,” says Steele. “Each of these women saw a need, based on their personal experiences. Whether it was from working in the industry or experiencing a lack of access to specific products or services, they each identified a gap in the market, which has driven the success of their respective businesses.”

Makeup for Melanin Girls (MFMG) founder Tomi Gbeleyi includes her online community in the product-creation process. supplied

Tomi Gbeleyi, founder of Makeup for Melanin Girls (MFMG) and a Visa She’s Next Grant Program recipient, began her journey to entrepreneurship with an Instagram page dedicated to uplifting her favourite Black and dark-skinned makeup creators and championing diversity in beauty.

While working as a model, Gbeleyi had to learn how to master her own makeup when the artists at her jobs frequently didn’t have the products or the knowledge to work on her skin tone. She noticed that Instagram was lacking a community for dark-skinned makeup enthusiasts, and the rest is history.

MFMG grew exponentially into a bona-fide cultural movement. It wasn’t long before the page exceeded 100,000 subscribers, with a corresponding hashtag (#MakeupForMelaninGirls) that’s been used more than one million times.

“I didn’t actually seek out to create a business when I first started,” Gbeleyi says. “I was building an online community.”

That community became central to MFMG, both as its customer base and as the guiding voice behind its products, which include lashes and eye shadows.

Most mainstream makeup brands lack product representation for dark-skinned consumers, Gbeleyi says. By including her community in the product-creation process through surveys and audience engagement, she has filled that gap and tapped into an enthusiastic market.

“Our whole mantra is ‘you’re beautiful, your needs matter, and your dollars count.’ You’re important to us.”

Maguire Shoes founders Romy (left) and Myriam Belzile-Maguire. supplied

Maguire Shoes, a Montreal-based brand founded by sisters Myriam and Romy Belzile-Maguire, also aims to fill an under-appreciated consumer need. They started in 2017, with just one product and now have concept stores in Montreal, Toronto and New York – all thanks to their innovative direct-to-consumer strategy that provides designer-quality footwear at a mid-range price.

When she decided to start Maguire Shoes, Myriam Belzile-Maguire was a top designer at a major footwear brand. Part of her job involved travelling around the world to research new shoe trends, and throughout her travels she noticed a crucial gap in the market.

“Everywhere I went, the shoes that were around $150 were underwhelming and the quality wasn’t great,” she says. “The shoes that were really special and great quality were all over $500.”

The market was missing a key mid-budget price range of $200 to $300 shoes for the average consumer looking for high-quality investment pieces, that wouldn’t break the bank. Belzile-Maguire realized that by going direct-to-consumer, they could operate out of the best shoe factories in the world while keeping the costs much lower than designer footwear of similar quality.

Maguire Shoes products, seen here in the company’s New York concept store, offer designer quality at a mid-range price. supplied

Cost transparency is also key to the Belzile-Maguire brand.

“Most customers have no idea where their shoes are made or how much it costs to make a shoe. That’s all information I wanted the public to know,” Belzile-Maguire says.

ŪNIKA, Makeup for Melanin Girls and Maguire Shoes are emblematic of the kinds of businesses Visa Canada is excited to support, the company’s Sarah Steele says.

“It’s so inspiring to see how these business owners have taken a market need and solved it in an interesting and unique way.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Visa. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.