Massachusetts

Conrado

Location: Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts
Website: https://shopconrado.com/
52% jump in traffic from Google Ads in December

Clothing is the thread that connects the places Angela Sison calls home. Her mother owns a garment workshop in the Philippines; Angela went to fashion school in San Francisco; and, in 2016, she joined her future husband on Martha’s Vineyard, leaving a corporate fashion job to found her own design brand, Conrado. The aesthetic is a comfortable, versatile elegance, which Angela calls “New England meets the tropics with a California vibe.” The style was inspired by family trips from the city to the beach, and by her grandfather, a traveling salesman who moved seamlessly between urban and rural settings. The company is named after him. Angela is committed to sustainability and uses only remnants or overstock, saving over 50,000 yards of fabric from landfills so far. She launched her brand at a local flea market, and after selling out on the first day, told herself, “I think I can do this.”

In 2023, Angela added a shop to her design studio, where people can browse her creations, plus accessories, skincare items, and more. To help attract customers, Angela turned to Google. “My Business Profile was really helpful when I moved to the new location. There was a 38-percent increase of people using it to find me,” she says. Performance Max campaigns expand her reach beyond the island, and accounted for a 52-percent rise in website traffic in December. “It’s easy for me to connect my website to [Performance Max campaigns] and provide inputs to pull products directly into the ads,” she notes. Angela also uses insights from Google Analytics to improve webpages: A data-based website update resulted in a 205-percent jump in views in 2023. Meanwhile, Angela’s busy building connections. She networks with other AAPI-led businesses, teaches classes on social media, and helps kids learn how to mend clothes. Most of all, she says, “I love connecting with customers, and seeing how my clothing makes them feel confident.”

Destiny African Market

Location: Randolph, Massachusetts
Website: https://destinyafricanmarket.com/
700% YoY growth

“Food is my love language” is more than a slogan for Sola Ajao, owner of Destiny African Market Variety & Wholesale. Those are words to live by as she serves her community with authentic African foods and goods, including her famous homemade moin moin bean cakes. Sola learned to cook while growing up in Nigeria, and when she immigrated to Boston in 1986, she was surprised that she had to travel to New York City to find African spices and foods. That led to her Boston catering business, cooking authentic African dishes for weddings and other events. It thrived for 30+ years, until a serious bout with COVID changed her life. “I prayed that if I survived, I would open my own store,” Sola recalls. She made that dream come true in 2021, opening Destiny African Market to serve the area’s diverse population and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Sola uses Google Workspace to help manage her business, using video calls on Google Meet for teamwork, Docs for recordkeeping, and Sheets to track inventory. Her Google Business Profile identifies Destiny African Market as both a women- and Black-owned business, which helps bring in customers searching for African food. “Like any business, we’re also a digital business,” says Sola’s daughter Adebukola Ajao, digital marketing manager. “People searching for ‘African market’ find our Business Profile. This helps get them in the door. Today, 85% of our calls come from Google.” Now customers from New York and other states come to Sola’s market, and she plans to start selling goods online as part of her effort to bring African food into mainstream American food culture. Because community is family, Sola donates food to local charitable organizations. “Food is how we show people we love them,” Sola says. “Google helps us let people know we are here.”

Playa Society

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Website: https://www.playasociety.com/
50% increase in website traffic since 2020

Esther Wallace came late to basketball, picking it up when she was 15 years old. Still, she played Division I ball in university and went on to play and coach in England. Esther felt lucky to have found the sport, which helped shape her identity and built her self-confidence. But even as she earned a Master’s degree in marketing and landed a full-time job, she kept asking herself, “What if I had more exposure to women’s sports, and had begun playing sooner? How much better could I have been?” That led her to start her Boston-based clothing company Playa Society in 2018. Playa Society sells streetwear designed to bridge the gap between women and sports and fuel conversations about gender equality, like T-shirts reading “Girls who play sports become women who lead.” Says Esther, “I decided to create the brand that I needed when I was younger–one that would show the world that women can be strong, bold, and beautiful all at the same time.”

In 2020, Esther turned to Google Ads to bring more customers to her website. When pro athletes posted photos of themselves wearing Playa Society sweats, Esther wanted to make sure social media users would know where to buy them. The company has strengthened its e-commerce offerings with tools like Google Merchant Center and the Google Channel on Shopify. Esther learns what works to bring visitors to Playa Society through her Google Business Profile, and uses Gmail, Google Meet, and other Google Workspace tools to help run the business. With the help of Google tools, her website traffic has increased by 50 percent, and Playa Society has seen a 30 percent increase in sales. Today, Playa Society is fulfilling Esther’s belief in the power of community and gender equity. Says Esther, “For me it means representation; it means being the Black-woman-entrepreneur that just one girl needs to see in order to spark a light in her.”

Nôs Casa Café

Location: Roxbury, Massachusetts
Website: https://www.noscasacafe.com/
5 employees

Ana Maria Fidalgo came to Boston in the 1980s, seeking medical care for her mother, who, along with her father, came from West Africa’s Cape Verde islands. Ana Maria settled in the Roxbury neighborhood, opening a family-run grocery store. When she and a friend who also loves to cook noticed an empty storefront, “We thought, ‘Let’s take this place and find jobs for unemployed women in the neighborhood who know how to cook Cape Verdean cuisine,’” Ana recalls. In 2010, she opened Nôs Casa Café, hiring four local women, with son Joshua Fidalgo, dean of a local STEM academy, helping after work. The café specializes in classic Cape Verdean dishes such as cachupa, a stew of corn, lima beans, sweet potato, and fish or meat. “Our food is fresh, accessible, and affordable,” Joshua says. Their Business Profile on Google brought in customers beyond the local area, and glowing reviews began rolling in. They gave back to their community, donating meals to families in need and senior citizens, and partnering with nonprofits fighting insecurity.

When COVID-19 forced restaurants to close in March 2020, the future looked uncertain. The business received a Paycheck Protection Program loan to continue paying their five employees, and a PPE grant to buy gloves and other supplies. They reopened two months later with fewer tables, operating at 60-percent capacity. They updated their Business Profile on Google with new service options such as “curbside pickup” and “no-contact delivery,” added photos to attract more takeout and delivery business, and enabled Google Pay mobile-ordering apps. Google Analytics revealed what whetted customers’ appetites, with one photo of an array of dishes garnering nearly 100,000 views. “Even through challenging times, with the support of the community and our customers—and with Google products and resources—we’re in a good place,” Joshua says. “We’re true to our mission. We're hopeful.”

Nested Bean

Location: Hudson, Massachusetts
Website: www.nestedbean.com
6 employees

When Manasi Gangan was on maternity leave with her son, she experienced what so many parents of newborn children do: sleep deprivation. “I realized how difficult it gets to maintain your sanity when you’re lacking sleep,” said Manasi. “I wanted to solve the problem because I felt it firsthand.” Manasi noticed her son only slept in her arms or when she rested her hand on his chest. One night she replaced her hand with a small stuffed toy, and to her amazement, he remained asleep. “I started adding things around his body to mimic my embrace,” said Manasi. After months of research and testing, Manasi unveiled Nested Bean’s Zen Swaddle, the world’s first gently-weighted swaddle for infants, in 2013. Starting out as a B2B company, Nested Bean soon decided to sell to consumers directly. “Because of the middle man, it became extremely hard for us to tell our own story,” said Manasi. “We had to find a way to educate our customers ourselves.”

In 2016, Nested Bean gutted its existing e-commerce platform and started exploring Google solutions like YouTube, Google Ads, and the Google Marketing Platform. With the help of the YouTube team, Manasi created the company’s first educational video. “We started using it on YouTube and social media and saw awareness really grow,” said Manasi. Today, Google Ads is responsible for more than 30% of the company’s total revenue, contributing to its impressive 3X year-over-year growth since 2016. Nested Bean also uses Google Optimize and Analytics to run A/B tests and make continuous improvements to its campaigns. “Google Analytics is pivotal to improving the performance of our ads and in turn our business,” said Manasi.

Having served more than 500,000 customers, Nested Bean has evolved from one unique product to a full sleep and wellness brand for infants, including resources and advice for families around the world. “Google tools will continue to play a huge role in growing our brand awareness,” Manasi said. That awareness has created new possibilities like a social media group that Nested Bean moderates where new parents can share their sleep challenges and offer support. Nested Bean also donates its products to hospitals where they are often used for babies affected by exposure to drugs in the womb. Manasi sees the future of Nested Bean as a consumer technology company and hopes to cross the $100 million revenue mark within five years. “Nested Bean has become bigger than one person” she said. “It’s so gratifying to see the impact that you can create.”

CareAcademy

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Website: careacademy.com
15 employees

Caregiving has always played a central role in Helen Adeosun’s life. Her immigrant parents worked as caregivers, and she supported herself through graduate school by doing the same. While in grad school, one of Helen’s professors posed a question: If you had the opportunity to create a company or program that would impact 1 billion people, what would it be? “The answer for me was figuring out ways to educate and certify people so they can get higher paying caregiving jobs,” said Helen.

That was the impetus for CareAcademy, an educational platform that provides expert-developed online training for senior home care professionals. “It takes quite a bit to turn an insight or vision into a company,” said Helen, who began shopping the concept around in 2015. To help get CareAcademy off the ground, Google for Startups invited her to attend a two-week long program for female entrepreneurs and to pitch investors on-stage at Google Demo Day. There, Helen raised $1.6 million in funding, which she used to hire most of the CareAcademy team. “We had a ton of exposure — and a little bit of wind beneath our wings after we got some cash coming through the door,” she said. From there, Helen and her team began selling CareAcademy to employers, who in turn use it to upskill their caregivers.

Today, CareAcademy uses a number of Google tools to monitor and optimize its online presence. Helen uses Google Analytics and Google Search Console to keep an eye on keywords that are driving web traffic and Google Ads to reach people using them. “Anything that allows us to see how folks are engaging with the pages — what they’re clicking on, if they’re viewing, how long they’re viewing — is absolutely key,” she said. Helen and her team of 12 also use G Suite apps like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Drive to stay connected. “G Suite helps us manage our business,” said Helen. “I don’t know what we’d do without our G Suite account — the life of CareAcademy is encoded in Google Docs.”

CareAcademy has trained 35,000 caregivers in the last three years. CareAcademy hopes to up that number to 500,000 in the future. “We wouldn’t be where we are without Google. The success we’ve had inspires us to keep pushing,” said Helen. A mission-oriented company, CareAcademy focuses on creating opportunities specifically for women of color and immigrants by working with groups that support them. “Our classes provide the ability for folks from those groups to access jobs,” said Helen. “In order to keep the doors open, we have to maintain that mission as a company.”

Blank Label

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Website: www.blanklabel.com
26 employees

Blank Label makes custom clothing for men of all body types and sizes. “We believe everyone should feel confident in the clothes they wear,” says CEO Fan Bi. “It’s frustrating to be uncomfortable, so our goal is to provide a personal, custom fit to every client we see.” Launched in 2009 as an e-commerce brand, Blank Label now has six locations around the U.S., with more on the way. Their repertoire has grown from dress shirts to the full professional wardrobe, including suits, chinos, top coats, and more. And the company is determined to become a household name in the world of custom tailoring. “Custom has existed for a long time, but there’s still no category-defining brand for it. We hope to be the ones to build that,” Fan shares.

While their brick-and-mortar business has taken off in recent years, Fan intends to keep the company planted in its digital roots. “Digital brings a lot more accuracy to the way we make decisions,” he says, noting that 85 percent of their overall marketing budget goes to online advertising. From the beginning, AdWords, Google’s advertising program, has played a key role in the business. “AdWords has helped us reach the customer who needs us, who is searching for the exact thing we deliver,” Fan explains. Google Analytics provides crucial conversion data to back up their marketing decisions, and Google My Business helps them make the most of their online presence, providing an avenue for customer feedback and reviews. The company also uses Gmail and other G Suite tools to keep their internal and external communications efficient. “Google and the whole ecosystem is very much top of mind for us,” Fan adds.

Over the years, Blank Label has served tens of thousands of clients, many of whom become return customers and refer family and friends. With consistent double-digit annual growth, they are working toward dozens of more locations, all while staying close to the communities they’re already a part of. “We are active participants in the local charity scene wherever we have store locations. It’s important to us that we be engaged with our communities,” Fan shares. Throughout the company’s growth, Fan has appreciated the opportunity to build a business that has a meaningful impact on people’s lives. “We have clients who, before coming into our store, have never been able to find comfort in what they wear. Being able to help them really makes it all worth it,” he says.

Wicked Good Cupcakes

Location: Hanover, Massachusetts
Website: www.wickedgoodcupcakes.com
20 employees

Tracey Noonan and her daughter, Dani, began taking cake-decorating classes in 2010 as a fun way to spend time together. They had a knack for the craft and, after sharing some of their work online, received inquiries from consumers interested in their baked goods. Recognizing a business opportunity, the mother-daughter team opened Wicked Good Cupcakes in 2011, baking and shipping decorative cupcakes to customers nationwide. To keep their products fresh and safe during delivery, they packed them in distinctive mason jars—an idea that “got a tremendously positive response,” says Chief Operating Officer Scott Noonan. “It really took off from there.” Wicked Good Cupcakes tallied $375,000 in sales in their first full year and $1.8 million the following year after appearing on national television. “We gained thousands of customers by being on television, but then we had to figure out a way to keep them coming back,” Scott adds.

As a self-confessed “data junkie,” Scott knew that technology would be key to sustaining momentum and growing the family business. “We really wanted to understand our customers and figure out how we could make things easier for them,” he says. To this end, they’ve extensively used Google Analytics to inform their business decisions and enhance their online shopping experience. “I’m really proud of the metrics we’ve been able to achieve through these efforts,” shares Scott, noting that their conversion rate is about three times the industry average. Wicked Good Cupcakes also uses AdWords, Google’s advertising program, to drive traffic to their website. “It’s been a big part of our growth in terms of new customer acquisition,” he adds. And G Suite tools, such as Gmail, Docs, and Drive, help streamline their internal operations, from processing orders to task management.

Wicked Good Cupcakes ships half a million products a year to customers all over the country. They continue to grow at a double-digit rate annually and earned $4.5 million in revenue last year. They have also expanded their business to cater to corporate clients. For the Noonan family, however, retaining a personal touch amidst rapid growth is imperative. “As we get bigger and bigger, it’s easy to forget how important one individual cupcake jar can be to somebody,” Scott says. “But we never want to forget that. We want to continue being a company that people believe in. We want to be able to service our customers the best we can and produce the same high-quality products that we’ve been making for the past six years. That’s our goal as we continue to grow—to never forget our customers.”