Mary Seats Of Cupcake Mafia Addresses Black Businesses

While styling and working on developing a local store (where she first connected with a variety of mentors, including shoe designer Jeffrey Campbell), Seats formed a group of up-and-coming female rappers based on a nickname Gucci Mane had given to her. To her chagrin, Gucci Mane insisted on calling her Cupcake instead of Skittlez (“Back then, Gucci was a totally different person,” she says, referring to the rapper’s history with prescription-strength cough syrup. “He didn’t care about or respect me.”). The shirts they printed became more popular than the group itself, and Seats saw the potential in pivoting to a retail brand. Six years after she printed her first batch of shirts, and 20 years after she experienced homelessness, Seats became a CEO of a million-dollar business through a mix or luck and pure effort.