Meet the three finalists for our $5,000 Atlanta small business grant

When we opened the Next Stop Grant, our $5,000 Atlanta small business grant toward a warehouse suite, I expected to read a few dozen applications. We got 175.

Reading all of them took a week, and it changed how I think about what's actually holding product businesses back in this city. Today I want you to meet the three finalists, because their businesses are the clearest version of a story that showed up in application after application.

I'm one of three judges who scored every eligible application, so what follows is drawn from what these founders told us and what they've built in public. The recipient is announced Wednesday, October 7, 2026, at the Saltbox Atlanta, Chamblee launch party.

Who are the three finalists for the Next Stop Grant?

The three finalists are Zhonvieve Ellison of Eleven45 Candle Co, Courtney Wright of LipRevolt, and DeNeisha Branch of Alais Branché. All three run product businesses in metro Atlanta, and all three are operating out of space that stopped fitting a while ago.

Zhonvieve Ellison, Eleven45 Candle Co

Zhonvieve makes handcrafted soy candles, including signature reusable concrete candles, refills, and glass candles for gifting. Alongside the retail line, Eleven45 produces custom and private-label candles for corporate gifting, events, and brand partnerships.

The scale of what she's already delivered is the part that stopped me. She has filled an order of 450 candles for the Atlanta airport and 500 candles for Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, and she has done it while managing production, inventory, labeling, and packing herself, without a dedicated operational space. She's built all of it part-time while working full-time.

In her words, the constraint is simple: "I have the demand and experience; now I need the space to operate more efficiently." She's looking for room to store raw materials safely, produce in larger batches, and stage bulk orders without her garage setting the ceiling.

Courtney Wright, LipRevolt

Courtney founded LipRevolt, a Black-woman-owned and Spelman alumna-owned beauty brand built around its Meaningful Mattes collection: one-swipe, non-drying color made for every skin tone, in shades named Authenticity, Innovator, Motivator, Empower, and Visionary. Everything in the line is vegan and cruelty-free.

What makes LipRevolt unusual is the second business running alongside the first. Through LipRevolt Fundraising, Courtney partners with nonprofit organizations and groups to run online lipstick fundraisers, so the brand's growth and its partners' fundraising totals move together. That's two sets of deadlines and two sets of volume spikes running through one brand.

Fundraising runs on campaign calendars, which means the work arrives in waves instead of spreading evenly across the year. It's the kind of operation where square footage converts directly into how many groups you can say yes to.

DeNeisha Branch, Alais Branché

DeNeisha designs jewelry under Alais Branché: necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings in 18kt gold plating and stainless steel, across her Mixte Métal, Le Doré Gold, and L'Argenté Silver collections. The brand is built on a straightforward promise, that every woman should stand out and feel confident.

Her constraint is a split, not a shortage. She works from a traditional office in a commercial building, with inventory divided between that office and her home, and she has outgrown both. As she put it in her application, a Saltbox workspace would let her consolidate her operations in one place.

She's scaling across wholesale, retail partnerships, and ecommerce at the same time, which is exactly the point where running fulfillment out of two half-sized spaces starts costing real orders.
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What did 175 applications tell us about Atlanta product businesses?

They told us the bottleneck is almost never ambition. It's square footage.

Here's what the full field looked like:

• 102 of 175 businesses store inventory in a home or a garage. Another 32 are paying for a self-storage unit, which means roughly three out of four applicants are running a product business out of space that was never built for one.
• 115 of 175 founders pack and ship every order themselves. Only 2 use a 3PL.
• 105 are doing under 50 orders a month, and 72 are doing more than that, which tells me the squeeze hits well before the volume most people assume you need to justify a warehouse.
• 79 have been in business more than three years. This is not a field of brand new ideas waiting for a break. It's established businesses that have hit a physical ceiling.

All three finalists came out of that same pattern. Not one of them has a dedicated operational space today.

If you're reading those numbers and recognizing your own setup, our Q4 peak season guide for Atlanta ecommerce brands covers how to pressure-test it before the holidays.

How were the three finalists chosen?

Three judges scored every eligible application against four published criteria, weighted as fit at 30%, need and impact at 30%, traction at 25%, and local connection at 15%. There was no drawing and no random selection at any stage.

The judges were Shelly Densler, Ashley Wright, and me.

The applications that rose to the top had one thing in common, and it wasn't polish. They named the constraint in concrete terms. "We need more space" showed up constantly and scored the same every time. An applicant who told us what their current square footage caps them at told us something we could actually weigh.

You can read the full criteria and the official rules on the Next Stop Grant page, and the original grant announcement covers why we built the award as membership credit instead of cash.

What happens next?

The recipient is announced at the Saltbox Atlanta, Chamblee launch party on October 7, 2026, with all three finalists present. The $5,000 credit goes to the member account of the business selected and comes off the monthly membership on a warehouse suite until the balance is used.

From there:

1. The recipient starts membership at Saltbox Atlanta, Chamblee by November 1, 2026.
2. The credit applies to a warehouse suite of their choice, availability pending.
3. Any unused balance expires December 31, 2027.

See the building these three were competing for

Walk the dock, measure a suite, and picture your inventory out of your house. Saltbox Atlanta, Chamblee is open and running now.

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