By Craig Horleman,
Delaware State News through The AP

Six years in the past, Manuel and Geiszel Godoy had been solely trying to fill a necessity for his or her daughter and kids like her. But they ended up exceeding these expectations.

Mr. and Mrs. Godoy, homeowners of Delaware-based Black Sands Entertainment, had been unable to seek out youngsters’s books and comics that represented their household and its Black heritage.

They realized how such illustration remains to be one thing with which the leisure business struggles. While there are a couple of examples — resembling “Black Panther” — Black characters, administrators and content material creators stay the minority within the leisure world and face further struggles whereas making an attempt to make it there.

So the Godoys began their enterprise as a approach to diversify the sphere, by introducing Black characters and storylines of their comedian books.

“We saw a need just to do stories on African history before slavery. We wanted to connect with that aspect because it’s never really been told before. So we focus on all the different countries around Africa and other Indigenous groups, too,” mentioned Mrs. Godoy, whose firm’s books additionally prolong to the Incan and Malaysian cultures.

They began Black Sands to inform tales of sturdy Black characters set in these early days of historical past earlier than colonization. Established in 2016, their empire has grown to 25 titles. The hottest sequence is “Black Sands,” about vital Black pharaohs and their households in historic Egypt and surrounding areas.

To additional their journey into getting these tales advised in a full-length, animated method, the couple, each Army veterans, scored $500,000 on the ABC present “Shark Tank” through actor/comic Kevin Hart and Mark Cuban.

Mr. Hart’s world media firm Hartbeat formally closed the deal not too long ago with Black Sands Entertainment.

As a part of the partnership, Hartbeat will supply advisory companies to speed up Black Sands’ efforts, particularly within the space of movie and TV. Hartbeat and Black Sands are already in improvement on an animated function and a sequence across the “Black Sands” flagship franchise.

“The moment that Manuel, Geiszel and the Black Sands Entertainment team walked into the ‘Tank,’ I knew that this was a company that I wanted to bring into my eco-system,” mentioned Mr. Hart in a press release.

“The Black Sands team was looking for a partner that has resources to grow their distribution, expand on their production, find new creative talent, and promote their current and future portfolio of content — these are all areas of Hartbeat’s core business. I’m very excited that our team will be able to help Black Sands grow and continue to share their unique stories with audiences all over the world.”

The deal follows Mr. and Mrs. Godoy’s profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign, which reached its objective of $10,000 in a single minute and garnered $100,000 in sooner or later. Black Sands has offered 200,000 print copies of its comedian books, leading to $2 million in gross sales since its inception.

Aside from their army backgrounds — Mr. Godoy was a radar technician, and Mrs. Godoy labored in human sources — each have an curiosity in artwork.

“I went to fashion design school in California and have a bachelor’s in fashion design. I worked with Calvin Klein designing for them. … And my husband went to college for video game design. So he’s an artist, as well,” Mrs. Godoy mentioned.

In addition, each have had fingers in writing most of the books.

Mrs. Godoy, who serves as the corporate’s chief monetary officer, mentioned she may be very shocked by the corporate’s success.

“I thought I was going to continue to do fashion forever,” she mentioned.

But, considering again to Black Sands’ early days, she mentioned going the unbiased route was the best transfer.

“Usually, when you write novels and stuff, you have to go to the big dogs, and they want to change everything,” mentioned Mr. Godoy, Black Sands’ CEO. “I remember trying to pitch this really beautiful book, and they wanted to change the character’s name from Godoy to Jefferson just because of their market research. And I’m like, ‘That’s kind of stupid stuff.’”

Mrs. Godoy agreed.

“My last name is Godoy. It’s about my son and my daughter. I wrote about them in the book, and they wanted me to change the names. My kids love me incorporating them in our stories,” she mentioned.

In the ‘Tank’

The choice to go on “Shark Tank” was made for a couple of causes. “We wanted exposure, and we wanted to grow and scale the company, to take our company to the next level because there is so much red tape involved,” Mrs. Godoy mentioned.

However, showing on the present was a troublesome process.

“They don’t play games. They want to know your entire history. They do their due diligence. They want to know your credit report of your company, the health of your company. They want to see all your documents relating to your company. It’s a very, very, very hard process. And they were telling us during that process, a lot of people get cut, and they don’t make it,” Mrs. Godoy mentioned.

They appeared on “Shark Tank,” which was taped in summer time 2021 and aired Jan. 7, with their head of studio, Teunis De Raat.

They got here in asking for $500,000 for a 5% stake of their firm however settled for a suggestion from Mr. Hart and Mr. Cuban of $500,000 for 30%. The actor would deal with the leisure portion, and Mr. Cuban the technical aspect of issues.

Mr. Godoy shared his pleasure about Black Sands’ future with its new traders.

“They are putting their name out there with us. And now that that’s happened, we can actually start making some real business plays on the animation production side,” he mentioned. “We have it out there. It’s all public. It’s all ready to go. And that alone allows us to go after key voice actors, go after animation studios and stuff like that, when we couldn’t do that prior.”

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