Black History Month - Tineka Smith
Kicking this week off we have Tineka Smith, the founder of Huetribe, a greetings card publisher set up to promote social inclusivity and celebrate the beauty and diversity of modern day relationships by catering to interracial and LGBTQ couples.
Did you always know this was the career you wanted?
I actually was training, from the age of 11, to become a ballet dancer and told my mother when I was 17 that I planned to audition for a few ballet companies in New York. She immediately stopped paying for my classes and I wasn't allowed to train anymore. I was told a college education was not optional and in the autumn I found myself enrolled in a university with my dreams of ballet dashed.
Of course I understood her point of view. She grew up in 50's and 60's in the United States, partly in the South. This was a time where education could really elevate a black person and the community had educational opportunities that weren't open to previous generation. As a child I was expected to receive straight A's and was punished if I didn't. However, it really shaped my work ethic and I graduated from university with honours and went to on to work for organisations such as the United Nations as a communications consultant. I wouldn't have achieved that without the kind of parental persistence I received, tough as that might seem.
What's something people would be surprised to learn about you?
I am a green belt in Taekwondo!
What is the most fulfilling part of your work?
Knowing that I’m doing something positive and with purpose that helps a wider social cause helps me to get out of bed every morning. When you’ve put all your energies, passion, money and hard work into making an idea work, that’s when running a business like this becomes very fulfilling. Mintel Research recently branded Huetribe an ‘innovator’ in the greetings card industry, which for me was really encouraging. Huetribe is a young business, but we have dreams to disrupt the greetings card industry for the better.
What are you currently working on?
We’re currently working on expanding the designs of our cards and product line in time for Valentines Day. We photograph and feature real couples on our cards, which we feel adds authenticity and class to our range, which is great – it’s different from the other options out there that simply use contrived stock images mashed together with generic graphics.
What advice would you give your younger self?
It’s an old fashioned saying but “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.” To succeed in many kinds of business, you need to shout about your proposition and your message, and you need to be persistent and strategic about it. I suppose this can also be applied to both careers and personal goals.
There is often a lot of backlash when creating something for a marginalised group, what was the most difficult thing about creating your brand?
That’s true, but our brand is very inclusive. We cater to all types of races and sexualities, and the one group we don’t represent on cards (white, heterosexual couples) already has an abundance of choice from the greetings card industry. Our goal is to fill the gap that is missing in the market right now. At the same time, relationships, families, and friendships are so intermingled today that our cards could actually be relevant for the majority of consumers.
Despite naysayers, sometimes you have to take that risk in order to stoke wider debate and in some ways promote the bigger picture. You can’t really do that without ruffling a few feathers. As I see it, the LGBTQI community and people of colour have won many social victories in recent history and yet today it’s still really hard to find a greetings card that reflects their reality, their lives and their relationships. When you think about it, classic design in cards has played a part in pushing gender and racially biased stereotypes that consumers are conditioned to prefer.
It might seem small, but it's the ability to be able to choose a card that caters to your identity that indicates a much bigger, more significant vision. It’s a vision that illustrates a society that acknowledges, accepts and respects you as an individual and that of the life you live – whether you’re Black, White, Asian, disabled or identify as LGBTQ.
Currently, there is barely any diversity in greetings card design and this is surreptitious because, as consumers who willing gift these to loved ones in order to commemorate an occasion, we are unwittingly disseminating subtle design codes built on a framework of bias that perpetuate discrimination.
With Huetribe, we’re not necessarily trying to displace incumbent designs; we’re addressing a largely under-serviced market and offering them choice – and that can't be a bad thing. I think this is applicable to other challenger brands with a social purpose – consumerism is now being used as an activist’s tool, to state a wider point, to promote a particular cause. Design here is helping us become aware of our own unconscious biases so that we become empowered to circumvent falling into these common traps.
What was it like having a high street store pick up your cards?
Getting our products stocked by high street retailer Scribbler was a real achievement. For me it signifies that change in terms of promoting inclusivity through retail goods is finally happening within a sector that has, for too long, promoted a very exclusive and narrow vision of love and relationships.