Last Wednesday we hosted the Meet the Beauty-Preneurs Skincare Masterclass with Laila Washington founder of Wild Seed Botanicals and Ada Iwuajoku, the founder of Derma Organics. The aim of the event was for both women to share their experiences of creating a beauty brand from scratch and offer advice on skincare.

Wild Seed is a botanical skincare brand which is handmade in small batches to ensure that they deliver the most potent, raw and purest potion directly from seed to skin. 

Derma Organics is an effective organic remedy to skin and hair complications. Handmade with utmost care, the products combine unique and exquisite natural-organic herbal formulations for all skin tones, colours and hair types.

The event was held at Conde Nast College in the middle of Soho which is the first educational establishment of the Condé Nast Publications Ltd. in the UK.

After a brief introduction to their brands we got down to the nitty gritty. Laila and Ada covered issues such as sourcing your finance, the production process, going through the arduous EU accreditation process, promoting their brands and their ambitions regarding distribution.

They also talked in-depth about the type of ingredients they use in their products, they gave some brilliant advice on what customers should look out for when purchasing skincare products - covering both negative and positive ingredients.

Ada and Laila ended the discussion by sharing the pros and cons when launching a brand in the beauty sector as a brownbeauty. Not only did these ladies show how you can overcome personal adversity and turn it into something positive, they demonstrated how you can move on from whipping up products in your kitchen to having a bonafide beauty brand with strong branding and a core customer base. Needless to say these ladies left us feeling inspired and we can’t wait to see what they do next.

Our sponsors of the event was Cos Box which is a new UK beauty box aimed at Women of Colour. They handed out specially curated beauty boxes to all of our attendees which contained the following products:

Crabtree & Evelyn Hand Therapy

Ultrasun Face SPF30 

SkinSense Hydranet Replenishing Neck & Décolleté Cream 

Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Skin Therapy Oil 

Fairfield Gardens Natural Lip Balm

Derma Organics Chestnuts & Brown Sugar Body Buttercream 

There was also a lovely leaflet in the box which contained skincare tips from Dija Ayodele, founder of Black Skin Directory.

We would also like to thank KeraCare and B. Cosmetics for supplying is with products for the event.

Also the team from Glamour magazine who hooked us up with tickets to the Glamour Beauty Festival to run as a giveaway and Elsie Boat, founder of the Wine Lovers Box who gave away a box to a lucky attendee.

Pics by Maria Tumolo from The Tiger Tales and Sarah Fynn.