From Viral Video to Household Name: How April Showers Manifested Her Afro Unicorn Dreams

Leave it to April Showers, and she’d tell you she’s just a woman doing what needs to be done. Ask the people around her, and they’d dub the serial entrepreneur, mom, and business owner a unicorn, or more specifically, an Afro Unicorn. 

Showers believes in the power of manifestation and notes that much of her life has come to her through this mystical process. So, when a friend began referring to her as a unicorn, it wasn’t long before that reference manifested into something more. 

Enter her icon-worthy Afro Unicorn brand, founded in 2019. Since then, it has catapulted her into a retail maven with clothing, party supplies, books, accessories, pool gear, and more. 

It all started with a viral video of an afro-touting unicorn. 

“There was a video that was going viral, the little girl wearing the Afro Unicorn, and someone walked by and said, ‘I love your hair.’ And she said, ‘Thank you – it’s an afro.’ So that video was getting a lot of traction from every blog post you could possibly think of,” Showers said. 

Unknowingly, her brand was solidifying itself into something majestic at that moment. 

“I wanted to start it to help other women find their inner unicorn,” Showers says. “I wanted to motivate, help, and promote other women entrepreneurs to let them know that they have a unicorn within them, and I was just giving them the avatar to represent who they were.” 

The avatar immediately became a representation for Black folks to see themselves in unicorns. The viral video making its rounds is what had Walmart calling the founder for products to line their shelves. The rest is manifestation gold. 

“It became something bigger than just me wanting to help people find unicorns within them. It was also to celebrate and embrace Black and brown beauty.”

Showers is keenly aware of the magic Black women possess. The single mom of two, who is also a licensed real estate broker and business owner of multiple ventures, credits her can-do energy to her womanly nature.

“I’m a woman. That’s what we do,” she says. 

But after her friend convinced her that she herself was a unicorn, a little juxtaposition began to shape her destiny. 

“Because I didn’t know much about unicorns, I had to look them up, and I saw that they were unique [and] mystical, and I immediately said, I’m unique, and I’m all things Black girl magic because Black girl magic, for me, was what I was doing, running the businesses, raising my boys, doing self-care and just making it flow. So that was a superpower. So, I’ve always felt that I was Black girl magic, but when I found out that unicorns also were mystical, I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, well, that’s that.’ That’s me.” 

The ideal embodies what she wants fans of her products to feel for themselves, and it’s a huge part of why she added the Afro Unicorn Foundation for girls ages 7-17 with the commitment of ‘helping them discover their unique potential and become confident leaders of tomorrow.’

“I’m a big dreamer,” Showers says. “Part of Afro Unicorn is believing in the greatest superpower of all. I love to journal and manifest, so [the girls] created journals to start writing their best day ever so that they can visualize what they want to see, so it could actually happen.”

And there’s so much more for the brand. 

Though Showers never considered having hair products, other women erroneously assumed that Afro Unicorn was haircare. This got her wheels churning, and the brand’s Magical Tresses haircare line launched last fall. 

“I’m a manifester,” Showers says.  

Overall, the power of manifestation has pushed her along and brought to life her wildest dreams and even things she’s never considered. 

“You have to really see it,” she says. “You must see the end [result] from day one. I said Afro Unicorn would be a household name and a worldwide brand. Day one, I saw it. I saw it big. I saw it on the shelves. I had no idea, however, how it was going to happen. So, my parting words would be to see the end and not worry about the how.”