Origins

I never saw myself as a founder or launching a business at the start of my career. As an aerospace engineer at my dream company at that time, climbing the ladder was my primary objective as a freshly graduated 22-year-old living in Seattle. I was told from the get-go to always maintain a clean-cut hairstyle to look professional by mentors, so I followed advice with training and maintaining a waves hairstyle. This brought me to durags as the primary tool I needed to compress my hair after hours of brush sessions to lock in my 360 wave pattern.

As the years went back, I grew not only increasingly frustrated with corporate 'culture', but also the shortcomings to the durag I soon learned. They slip off overnight, left lines on my forehead, and I couldn't really workout or play soccer with them. They were not functional enough.

It was in October of 2022 where after a big career move at big tech and realizing the demands and lack of fulfillment were molding my career and profession to be an identity that I didn't want, that made me decide to pursue a true project outside of work that will me more meaningful to me. I decided to take matters into my own hands and when my love of problem-solving, career experience as an aerospace design engineer and then sourcing engineer that I wanted to not replace the durag, but provide an evolution that solved my problems.

Over the next 12 months, I spent late nights in my apartment with a flip chart, moving from Design to Development to Testing to Validation. BRIMĀ was born from this need and journey. I named it after my great-grandfather, Brima Mbenga—ask me about why I chose to honor him if you're interested.

After 1000 email sign-ups and 100s of emails asking about the product in a month from posting and sharing pictures of the BRIMĀ 22 athleisure durag on Instagram, it was clear that there was a need and gap. Although not everyone was receptive to durags with drawstrings (some have called it gentrified lol), it was a clear signal to push these boundaries from day 1 for the sake of sparking innovation in an underrepresented space between the ethnic hair care market and the athleisure wear market.

Both growing fast, but an intersection for the highest standard of performance and hair care is open. This is where BRIMĀ strives to exist and what motivates me every day as a first-time founder, entrepreneur, trying to figure it out and work on something meaningful.

We, the BRIMĀ fam, are glad to invite you to join us as we continue to push boundaries and revolutionize everyday headwear.

No Compromise. Stay active, stay protected.

Blessings,

Ebrima Badjie | Founder & CEO