How I Developed A Skincare Brand – The key to being successful in anything you do is to be passionate. If you don’t care what you are doing or selling or trying to show people, then other people won’t either, which is why it’s essential to find something that you love. In my case, I had interests in many different categories: from being a chef to a winemaker to a beauty brand developer. However, I quickly realized that I would never be satisfied with a single category; I was interested in combining categories. I realized I needed to find the intersection between all the things I wanted to be involved in, which ended up being skincare. I wanted to create a forefronting innovation product but rooted in tradition, creating an intersection between nature, beauty, and science. I wanted to revive the traditional ways of maintaining youthfulness through herbs, fermented foods, and whole botanicals while also pushing innovation by creating our own proprietary process called Phytofermentation. With that, we knew we wanted to apply our philosophies of whole plant skin nutrition and our Phytofermentation process to a new category of skincare; from these developments, ARÊMÊS flourished from there.
In this type of business, the market is very saturated. There are many skincare and cosmetic brands out in the market, and even if you are doing something different or have innovative products, it’s tough to be heard and be seen over the industry’s noise. With this in mind, it’s important when creating a business to have clear intentions with what you are selling, how you’re going to sell it, who you are selling it to, why someone needs it, and what your mission statement is. Validation, in this sense, can be essential when looking for new ideas to pursue in such a saturated market. For example, the validation for the fermented aspect of our brand came from scientific studies. In recent years, fermented foods have made their own niche section of the health food market that wasn’t nearly as popular a few years ago. I had a pull towards fermented foods early on. I had pondered the idea that if certain types of fermentation are beneficial for your internal microbiome, why can’t they be a saving grace for your skin microbiome as well. After extensive research, many of which studies were carried out in places like Asia, where fermentation in all forms has been in practice for thousands of years, I quickly realized that my idea for fermented skin food was valid. This validation checking should be the same type of process anyone should take if you are looking for unrepresented niches in the marketplace that you believe you can fulfill.
How I Developed A Skincare Brand?
Funding is another big part of starting a business. Depending on your desired scale of the prospective business, there are many different funding options, from out of pocket to crowdfunding to investors. For ARÊMÊS, I raised capital through angel investors with a Series A investment round. This brand and product line is very personal to me, so it was important for me to keep the family’s shares. When you’re first starting, I think it’s important to work with people you trust, are reliable, flexible in their role as needs and duties change, and, most importantly, are passionate about the brand, its products, and what the company stands for. That includes investors and employees. (Books that have given me helpful guidance in navigating the business world and the inner workings of your own business are Play Bigger and The Lean Startup.)(Books that have given me great guidance in navigating the business world and the inner workings of your own business are Play Bigger and The Lean Startup.)
A huge piece of starting your own business is the ability to be flexible. Everything is a learning process when you’re first starting up, and you have to accept that not everything works out as planned. When things go wrong, take it as an opportunity to first: reflect on what went wrong and why. Second: how can I fix this situation/and/or is there an opportunity to improve or pivot. A perfect example would be the COVID-19 pandemic. Things were coming along well for us as we were finally getting traction in the luxury skincare market. Still, just like everyone else, we were impacted by COVID-19, so we decided to pivot and create a moisturizing hand sanitizer and an immune booster for our customer base, which was well received.
If you are looking to either start your own business or go into the beauty and wellness space, my biggest piece of advice is to find something that you are passionate about and run with it. Everything is a learning curve, so you have to figure out what works and what doesn’t with trial and error while still staying true to your vision for the company. As for being the CEO or Founder of the company, you have to remain resilient. A million things could go wrong and will go wrong in the beginning, but you have to be able to bounce back when they do, or you will never be able to move forward. Be true to your mission, your product, and yourself, and the rest will fall into place.
