From $33,000 to 18,000 Stores: How Black Girl Sunscreen Ships at Scale

In 2016, Shontay Lundy noticed something missing. People with darker skin tones had almost no good sunscreen options—products that blended in, didn’t leave a white cast, and actually worked for the skin they were in. So she saved $33,000 of her own money, started Black Girl Sunscreen in Miami, and got to work.

That was 10 years ago.

Today, Black Girl Sunscreen is in more than 18,000 stores—Target, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Amazon—with wholesale partners across the US, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and a UK launch in the works. The brand’s mission hasn’t changed. The operation behind it has had to.

The weight of manual

Running in-house fulfillment for Black Girl Sunscreen falls to Deasia Moore, the company’s fulfillment lead, and her partner Scott. Two people. Wholesale orders shipping to retail partners on four continents.

Before ShipStation, that job was an inbox problem. Wholesale labels arrived via email—or didn’t. Customs forms had to be built and documented by hand. Tracking down a missing shipment meant digging through message threads. For a brand moving fast and growing faster, manual work was becoming a ceiling.

“Everything was manual before we switched to ShipStation,” Moore said. “It’s night and day.”

Vishvesh Soni came on board in 2023 to run operations and saw the problem clearly. He’d used ShipStation at a previous company and knew what it could do. The goal: pull wholesale and international orders into one centralized system, and cut the manual work slowing the team down.

“Differentiating our wholesale and DTC operations was a very important—and key—turning point for us,” Soni said.

10 AM, every morning

Now Moore’s team arrives to find orders already waiting. They check the details, compare rates, and print labels—all without bouncing between systems or building a customs form from scratch.

International shipping, once the most friction-heavy part of the job, runs differently now. Rates calculate in real time on each order. Customer details pull through automatically. Customs documentation generates without manual input.

Rate Shopper is part of every morning’s routine. Before printing any label, Moore compares rates across carriers—weighing cost, speed, and reliability. She estimates it saves around 8% on shipping costs.

“We use Rate Shopper daily,” she said, “to see who’s competitive and which carrier can get it there on time.”

The Tamron Hall test

Last year, Black Girl Sunscreen landed a segment on Tamron Hall. Orders came in fast.

It was the first time Moore’s team had used batch printing—and it wasn’t a slow introduction.

“It was a roller coaster to get used to,” she admitted.

But they figured it out, and it held. That’s the kind of moment that reveals whether a system actually scales. For Black Girl Sunscreen, it did.

Summer, at 80%

For a sunscreen brand, summer isn’t just busy—it’s everything. Starting in late April and running through August, Black Girl Sunscreen sees roughly an 80% increase in order volume. Some years, a TV appearance or a big promotion drops on top of that.

Moore estimates ShipStation saves the team at least an hour a day during peak season—time that used to go to label printing and customs documentation, and now doesn’t have to.

Where they’re going

The UK launch is next. After that, broader expansion across Europe and continued growth across Africa, where the brand already ships to wholesale partners in Nigeria.

The mission that started with $33,000 and a gap in the market is still the same: get better sunscreen into the hands of people who need it—everywhere, and at scale. Breaking down the myth that people with darker skin don’t need sun protection is still the work.

A two-person team is doing it. And they’re not slowing down.

“The goal is to get Black Girl Sunscreen in the hands of people worldwide,” Moore said.

For any brand navigating that kind of growth, Moore’s advice is simple: “Just pull the trigger and do it. You won’t regret it. It was an excellent decision for Black Girl Sunscreen to make that move.”

Peak season is here. Manage more orders with less effort—start shipping with ShipStation today.