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After recently moving to Suffolk, Meek Dual is bringing her paint and sip company, Dirty Palette Parties, to the city. 

Coming from a corporate training background, Dual said her goal with this company is to host low-stakes networking events through community-focused art instruction events.

“We do bring women together,” Dual’s assistant, Feliciann Butcher said. “The idea is for people to be able to somehow interact with different people, and learn how to paint.”

Butcher said Dual has always enjoyed painting in her free time and has a creative eye, so they decided they would try and start a business catering to those talents. 

Originally from Maryland, Dual said her paint and sip events were very popular. She said 100 people came to her last event in Maryland. Since moving to Suffolk, Dual said she’s been having some difficulty building her brand in this area, but is starting to make a name for herself.

She planned her first event here to be a Galentine’s charity paint and sip with food, mocktails, gift bags, and raffle prizes. Some of the ticket sales were planned to be donated to HER Shelter, an organization providing resources to survivors of domestic violence.

“The idea was to, first of all, give to a charity that matters to me, because I actually moved here to escape a domestic violence relationship, or a toxic marriage,” she said. “So I was building this event to create community awareness of the HER shelter and also [Dirty Palette Parties].” 

A few days before the event was scheduled, Dual had to cancel it due to a lack of ticket sales. She was heartbroken because not only did she heavily invest thousands of dollars into the event, but she also wouldn’t be able to highlight an organization that deeply mattered to her.

“I had to announce to my team and my vendors and everything that we weren’t moving forward,” she said. “I get all these people to believe and follow my idea, and I’m leading, and it doesn’t happen. It just sucks so bad.”

However, things took a turn for the better when Dual received lots of feedback from people saying they still wanted to participate in the event but weren’t able to make it in person.

Because of Dual’s previous experience with online event facilitation during COVID-19, she was able to easily pivot and still host her originally planned Galentine’s Paint and Sip event virtually. There wasn’t catered food or gift bags, but Dual said she still plans on donating $500 to HER Shelter and she encouraged all participants to donate as well.

During the pandemic, Dual said she hosted many virtual paint and sip celebrations, including birthdays, baby showers, and anniversaries. She also partnered with two Maryland churches to host virtual events in an effort to keep their communities connected.

The Galentine’s online event went well, Dual said, and everyone was engaged and very active in the chat. She said most of them seemed to be a bit camera shy, but she’s brainstorming on how to improve that for future events.

Since that event, Dual has done a bit of marketing herself and met a small business owner in Virginia Beach who was drawn to Dual’s company because of the “Dirty Palette Parties” name. They are currently working on a contract that would allow Dual to host paint and sip events once a week called Dirty Thursdays.

After her first event didn’t go to plan, Dual said this new budding partnership has reinvigorated her love for entrepreneurship. She said she’s in the process of rebranding herself and making a commitment to hosting virtual events more regularly. 

Dual said her goal is to host an online event every week and concentrate on making social media content over the weekends.

“It’s a testament to just keep moving forward,” she said. “Because every day helps me to build the business even better.”