Remilekun Lawal: Revolutionalising Nigeria’s beauty industry

Remilekun Lawal, founder of Brown Skin Girl (BSG), is gradually changing the face of Nigeria’s beauty industry through the creation of fabulous natural, proudly Nigerian skin products.

Remilekun went into the business because she wanted to have a safe skin care alternative for people who had skin damage resulting from chemical products they used.

With just N10,000, she started the business in 2016, mixing shea butter and coconut oil with her body cream.

After mixing them together, a friend would always pick it up from her, a situation that went on and on. After a while, she saw a business potential in it and subsequently went for an online training to learn how to combine essential oils together with herbs for lotion.

Remilekun has had four people work for her and conducts trainings.

“I import some raw materials. Most of the essential oils I use are not grown in Nigeria, like olive, rose flower oil, sweet almond oil, eucalyptus oil and the likes. For fruits extracts, I get some here and still have to import some because they have to be grown organically. I also get my milk locally from a dairy farm. I shop online for some of my products. I equally source things that can be gotten locally like shea butter and coconut oil,” she states.

She says the dollar crunch in Nigeria in 2016 impacted her firm negatively.

In terms of challenges, she explains that packaging is a big challenge in the cosmetics industry at the moment.

“I hardly find good packaging materials that are up to standards for my products. In developed countries there are specifications for beauty care packaging materials, but you do not find this in Nigeria. The manufacturers don’t follow specification for cosmetics packaging but produce same packaging for all products,” she says.

“Another major problem is the huge desire for bleaching products among Nigerians. Everybody wants a product that will just bleach them quickly without considering the adverse effect of it. So it is quite difficult to convince people about organic and natural skin care products because it takes time before you see the effects on your skin, but people always want it very fast,” she adds.

She says poor power supply is also a major challenge, which has contributed to surging production cost, adding that lack of access to funds is also a major hiccup.

She recognises the role of the social media, disclosing that it has had a positive impact on her business.

“I started out by creating a BBM channel where I posted all my products and skin care routines on the channel and people started requesting my products through the channel. Despite that it was expensive then because of the FX volatility, people were still buying my products. My business has grown in the recession and it is still growing,” she discloses.

“Now I take some of my products to exhibitions and people still buy. I have customers that have been with me since starting till now,” she says.

Like other entrepreneurs, Remilekun says government must create an enabling environment for start-ups to survive.

“We need key infrastructures such as power to survive. Finance is also very key.  Start-ups need a lot of incentives and finance at single-digit interest rate. The government should adjust some of its importation policy to allow importers bring in products that cannot be produced in the country.

“The government must also ensure that standard products are imported into the country and not substandard. The government also has to look at some of the oils that are used by cosmetics industry to be grown in the country,” she says, while calling for tax holidays for start-ups .”

Josephine Okojie