We were lucky to catch up with Cleopatra Davis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cleopatra, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

I started Krouned Body Care in 2020 because at that time I was still serving in the US Navy, and it was the peak of COVID-19. Because everything was shut down, I was basically getting paid to stay at home. I wanted to create a business from something that I enjoyed doing and I couldn’t think about anything but the Skin Relief Cream I created to treat my son’s eczema. The Skin Relief Cream was the inspiration of Krouned Body Care. my son had extremely bad eczema since about 3 months old, the doctors would prescribe steroids that would literally strip his skin. I got scared and began my own research on the type of oils and ingredients that were best for eczema. After many trials and errors, I created the recipe for the Skin Relief Cream, and it made a huge difference on his skin. From there I developed the courage to venture into making soaps, clay masks, deodorants and all the variety of natural products that we have available at Krouned Body Care.

My husband and I had always dreamed of starting a business. Sometimes we would stay up late at nights talking about business ideas, strategies and ‘simulate’ ourselves on how we would handle the tasks of operating our own business. Though these techniques made us in tuned with each other’s ideas and business intentions, we had to learn a lot about entrepreneurship after our investments were already in motion.

Krouned Body Care started out as a strictly online company. We gained routine customers from other states like Maryland, Texas, South Carolina, just to name a few. We thrived from exposure on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Krouned Body Care began operating and growing entirely from its own profits, but we were not very well known in our local area of San Diego, CA.

After two years of operation, we are now available on Walmart.com and we are better known in San Diego. We started participating in our local swap meets and reach out to San Diego in a more authentic way by allowing people to sample our products and educating them on why it is better to use all- natural skincare products. This technique has been very profitable for us because not only do we defeat the overhead cost of providing free shipping with our online orders, but now we can offer better discounted prices while we are at the swap meets.
So, my short answer to how we scaled up is just putting one foot before the other and confining with our customer reviews. We are an all-natural company, so what better way is there to build exposure than to physically meet with our customers and build an authentic partnership.
Krouned Body Care is present at the Spring Valley Swap Meet on weekends. Come meet and greet with us and sample our genuine difference to the all-natural skincare market.

Cleopatra, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Cleopatra Davis, I am a wife and mother of a one year old girl and a 3 years old boy. I got into the industry because I had the need to create something all-natural, so I could better treat my son’s eczema. There are many people who have developed skin conditions as a result of using chemical based skincare products. Not only do we offer all-natural skincare products but we stay away from all the scientific names of our ingredients. That way our customers can easily identify what the product is made of.

I am most proud about successfully treating my son’s eczema.

At Krouned Body Care, we want everyone to know that there are many benefits of choosing all-natural skincare. Which is why all our products are cruelty-free and only include ingredients derived from plants.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When Krouned Body Care first started, I knew nothing about marketing. I was marketing to the wrong crowd. Targeting the wrong group of people on social media ads, and even wasting money on social media Ads. I have learnt this after reading many books about marketing and intertwining their lessons with my vision for Krouned Body Care. I have come to learn that it is all about steady growth. I work hard to ensure that the growth of Krouned Body Care is continuous and within our ability of operation.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the lesson that the visual aspect of product labeling is not important when considering a product rate of sales and profits.

When Krouned Body Care first started, all our products looked the same. I found that it made our products less appealing to our customers and it also introduced a level of confusion as to why the labels looked the same.

Contact Info:

• Website: Krounedbodycare.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/krounedbodycare
• Facebook: Facebook.com/Krounedbodycare