Tianna McFarlane’s late father was a serial entrepreneur who owned many different types of businesses during his life. Growing up, McFarlane had a front-row seat to the entrepreneurial journey as she watched her father run everything from a restaurant to a karate club. Her father’s passion for business fostered McFarlane’s interest in entrepreneurship. “I’ve always had this fire inside of me to start my own business,” she says. In the summer of 2019, after an unsuccessful search through several different retailers for a bandage that matched her skin tone, inspiration struck and McFarlane’s business, Heal In Colour, was born.
Heal In Colour is a wound care company that sells high-quality black and brown adhesive bandages made from premium materials at a competitive price. Their latex-free, flexible, fabric bandages with absorbent centers come in three signature shades and are thoughtfully designed to create a better healing experience. McFarlane is driven by the desire to help people with black and brown skin feel confident while they heal.
Shortly after launching her business, McFarlane had already garnered attention from a number of media outlets and business organizations, including UM Canada, a strategic media agency and marketing consultancy. They had recently awarded Heal In Colour with half a million dollars worth of digital, billboard, and television advertising placements through a program designed to help black-owned businesses achieve more marketing reach.
McFarlane was eager to capitalize on the opportunity with a strong creative campaign that would project a polished and professional brand image, but quickly learned that photoshoots are not only difficult to plan but cost-prohibitive as well. So, when she heard about the Racialized and Indigenous Supports for Entrepreneurs (RAISE) program she applied immediately. RAISE is a provincially-funded, comprehensive grant initiative that supports Indigenous, Black, and other racialized entrepreneurs in Ontario who are on the road to starting or scaling their businesses. In addition to grant funding, the program provides entrepreneurs with access to business development training, business coaching, and culturally responsive support services through the Parkdale Centre for Innovation’s Early Stage Entrepreneurship Program.
With the funds received from the program, McFarlane got to work planning a product-focused shoot that would generate a bank of creative assets she could leverage for her advertising placements. The modern photography she captured featured bright backgrounds and eye-catching shots of the bandages in use as well as the product packaging. The advertising campaign, which ran over the course of three months, was a huge success. McFarlane says she saw a 224% increase in website traffic and a 57% increase in sales during the campaign period.
The experience taught McFarlane a great deal about the importance and power of digital marketing. “Of course, people might want to use [grant funds] for inventory, but whenever you get an injection like this, you want to use that towards your digital presence. You want to really elevate your brand online.” McFarlane recently completed a second photoshoot focused on lifestyle images. She is excited to roll out new content on her website and social media platforms, and capitalize on the momentum from her successful advertising campaign. She has also been working on search engine optimization for her website to improve her ranking on Google.
In 2023, McFarlane expects Heal In Colour to have its first six-figure year. The brand is also launching it’s Not Just A Bandage initiative which will be a student orientation week collaboration with 25 colleges and universities across Canada. The goal is to expose 100,000 students to Heal In Colour bandages and to drive important conversations about diversity, inclusivity, and equity among students. McFarlane already has commitments from The University of Ottawa, The University of Toronto, University of Manitoba, Durham College, and Toronto Metropolitan University.
McFarlane believes finding a supportive community at the Parkdale Centre played a huge role in getting her business this far. “A lot of people in power are people that aren’t black and brown, so they might not see or understand the real need for this business,” she says. “My biggest takeaway is that now I have a community behind me, […] an ecosystem and an environment that I can go to if I need more help or resources to continue to build my business, and that’s invaluable.”
