Tomilola and Remilekun: Entrepreneurs shaking Nigeria’s skincare industry
Nigeria’s middle-class and urban population have continued to desire better quality beauty and personal care products as they constantly attempt to boost their personal image and confidence.
This has translated into the impressive growth recorded in the country’s beauty and personal skin care market. To tap into this opportunity, young entrepreneurs are now specialising in products that nourish the skin and bring great returns. Here are two entrepreneurs in this business.
Tomilola Awanebi
Tomilola Awanebi is the founder of Sheabuttersheen Nigeria Enterprises, a start-up that produces a range of organic skincare products.
Tomilola was inspired to start this business when her baby had issues with skin-related allergies that failed to respond to doctors’ prescriptions. According to Tomilola, the situation prompted her to carry out extensive research on alternatives to address these skin-related issues. The entrepreneur found shea butter, tried it on her baby and it yielded much result.
“I discovered a major challenge through personal experience. My first child had issues with allergies that lasted for years, despite doctors’ prescriptions and use of steroids,” she says.
“This challenge gave birth to years of research on alternative and organic cure to minor skin-related issues. It also raised my interest in organic therapy. As at then, the use of organic products was not pronounced, but funny enough, it was the answer to my child’s years of skin allergy because my research gave me positive results,” the entrepreneur adds.
To change this for others with skin-related issues, the Economics graduate established Sheabuttersheen Nigeria Enterprises in 2012. For her, the challenge was a business opportunity which should not be ignored.
Tomilola tells Start-Up-Digest that she started her business with only N11, 000, an amount she spent on buying raw materials for processing.
She started this business in her residential apartment and now has two major factories in Lokoja and Akure with over 20 employees. More so, product penetration is reaching over 18 states with two major export countries of focus.
“My initial start-up capital was N11, 000. Of course, I started with a manual process, but now, we are into mechanised way of production and have a machine with a two-tonne processing capacity of shea nuts.
“The business has grown from producing just shea butter for local consumption to the production of five other by-products of shea butter and also from local suppliers to exportation and getting NAFDAC licence,” she further says.
Tomilola sources her raw materials from local suppliers and from villages where shea nuts are grown. She also gets her packaging materials from Lagos.
Speaking on some of the challenges facing the business, the young entrepreneur says that irregular supply of shea nuts is the major challenge. She discloses that because shea trees are grown in wild areas, it is difficult to have them on any plantation.
She also identifies high rate of deforestation as another major challenge that is not just facing her business but the entire shea industry in the country. “Shea trees in most states are cut down as firewood and for charcoals.
“We also have external traders from neighbouring countries dictating our prices, making it difficult for local producers to afford it and still be profitable,” Tomilola notes.
She believes that lack of vital infrastructures such as stable power supply, good road network and storage facility, among others, has continued to impact on her business negatively.
Tomilola urges the government to address the issues around infrastructure, stating that it is the basis of industrialisation and growth of the nation, calling on them to ensure policy consistency and to stop the illegal felling of trees across the country.
The Madonna University, Okija, Anambra State graduate says that youths can only find agriculture attractive when there is innovation in the sector.
“Agriculture is viewed as a very stressful venture because it is labour intensive, but with mechanisation, youths would find agriculture attractive.”
On her advice to other entrepreneurs, she says, “Entrepreneurs should have vision, goals and mission clearly written and must stay focused to that vision and ensure each day that passes, they have achieved or worked towards achieving a goal.
“Entrepreneurs should be willing to start and grow a business out of nothing or with little. It is your success in ‘the little’ that will make ‘the big’ a reality. Endurance in an economy like ours is a virtue for all entrepreneurs and lastly financial discipline is vital to the growth of an enterprise,” she adds.
Remilekun Lawal
Remilekun Lawal is the founder of Brown Skin Girl (BSG) Limited, an organic and natural skin care products firm. Lawal went into the business because she wanted to have a safe skin care alternative for people whose skins are damaged by chemical products.
With just N10,000, Lawal started the business last year, 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.
Lawal currently has four people work for her and conducts trainings for others.
“I also 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 like. For fruits extracts, I get some here and still have to import others 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 source things that can be got locally like shea butter, coconut oil and black soap,” she states.
She says dollar crunch in Nigeria in 2016 impacted her firm negatively.
In terms of challenges, Lawal explains that packaging is a big challenge in the cosmetics industry.
“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 these in Nigeria. The manufacturers do not 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 also contributed to surging production cost, adding that lack of access to funds must be tackled.
She recognises the role of the social media, disclosing that it has 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 foreign exchange volatility, yet people were still buying my products. My business has grown and it is still growing,” she says.
“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 reveals.
Like other entrepreneurs, Lawal says government must create an enabling environment for start-ups to survive.
“We need key infrastructure such as power to survive. Finance is also very key. Start-ups need a lot of incentives and finance at a 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