Clean and Sustainable Personal Care & Clean Living Guide

We Won Title Nine Pitchfest! What This Big Win Means for umanos Big news from umanos: We’re officially a 2026 Title Nine Pitchfest Winner! Yep. We’re still pinching ourselves. In September, I packed an absurd amount of umanos products into my luggage, flew to California, put on my red jumpsuit, and took the stage at Title Nine headquarters to share our story. And we came home as a Title Nine Pitchfest winner—with a 2027 purchase order and an exciting new retail partnership ahead. For our growing, independent, woman-owned personal care brand, this is a pretty big deal. So, what is Title Nine Pitchfest? If you’ve never heard of Pitchfest, here’s the scoop. Title Nine is a 100% independent, woman-owned outdoor and activewear company that has spent decades creating products for active women—and supporting women entrepreneurs along the way. Each year, Title Nine Pitchfest brings nine female founders to the company’s headquarters in Emeryville, California, where they get the chance to pitch their businesses and products directly to the Title Nine team. But it’s about much more than standing on a stage and giving a pitch. Pitchfest was created to give women-owned brands access to something that can be incredibly difficult for small businesses to find: the opportunity to get in front of a major retailer, build meaningful relationships, and grow. Winning brands receive a purchase order for the following year and the opportunity to become a Title Nine retail partner. And this year, umanos was one of them. Why this Title Nine partnership means so much to us The purchase order is exciting. Obviously.But there’s something about this particular partnership that makes the win feel even bigger. Title Nine chose umanos to help expand its assortment into personal care and bring the category to its customers. That’s a huge vote of confidence in what we’ve been building. We started umanos because we believed the everyday products we use on our hair, skin, and bodies could be better. Better ingredients. Better performance. Better design. Less waste. And more good built into the whole thing. Our goal is to make well-made personal care essentials for lives well lived—products that fit just as naturally into weekend adventures as they do Monday mornings and everyday routines. And Title Nine gets that. They’ve built their brand around women who get out there, take risks, do things a little differently, and expect more from the things they bring along for the ride. Turns out, we make products for a lot of those same women. From a little idea to the Title Nine stage Standing on the Pitchfest stage was also one of those moments that made me stop and think about how far we have come. umanos started umanos by asking these questions: Could something as ordinary as our daily personal care routines do more? Could we make products that performed beautifully without loading them with a bunch of unnecessary junk? Could we rethink packaging and ingredients to make everyday personal care more sustainable? Could the products we use everyday actually help create positive change beyond them? Those questions eventually became umanos. Since then, we’ve grown one customer, one retailer, one product, and one leap of faith at a time. So having the opportunity to stand in front of hundreds of women, tell that story, and then hear “Alisha Stephens and umanos” called as a 2026 Pitchfest Winner? Yeah. That one hit differently. The best part? We didn't get here alone. If you’ve ordered from us, discovered us at a local shop, stopped by our booth at a market, told a friend about us, left a review, replied to an email, followed along on social media, or simply rooted for this crazy little idea—we want you to know something: You helped get us here. Growing an independent brand takes a village, and we’re incredibly lucky to have a community of customers, retail partners, manufacturing partners, friends, family, and fellow small-business owners who continue to show up for us. Every order and every recommendation has helped us take another step forward. This win belongs to all of you, too. What's next for umanos + Title Nine? Now for the really fun part. umanos will officially partner with Title Nine in 2027, bringing our personal care products to a whole new community of customers. There’s plenty more to come, and we can’t wait to share it with you as we get closer. For now, we’re taking a minute to celebrate this one. A huge thank you to the entire Title Nine team for creating Pitchfest and putting real support behind women-owned businesses. And to everyone who has believed in umanos from the beginning—or discovered us somewhere along the way—thank you. This is a big one for our brand. And we’re just getting started. 💙 — AlishaFounder, umanos

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The Journal

Seattle-Based Brand, umanos, is a 2026 Title Nine Pitchfest Winner 🎉

Big News! Alisha Stephens Title Nine Pitchfest Finalist

Real People, Real Passion: Get To Know Our Tiny But Mighty Team

Our Manifesto

umanos Unwrapped: A 2022 Year in Review

Behind the Brand: Creating umanos

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