We were lucky to catch up with Adassa Ramirez recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Adassa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I love being a business owner and working for myself, in general. Although I have always been a creative spirit, whose been writing poetry since I was a teenager and also dabbled in painting, my bread and butter was doing accounting, It feels like a sense of freedom being able to step away from the corporate “rat race” environment and office politics.

There have been moments though where I sometimes wondered about returning to the structure and stability of the corporate environment. Those moments were when I moved to Puerto Rico. I realized that the businesses I had been buying organic ingredients, bottles and labels from were now charging me international shipping instead of domestic even though the shipping method hadn’t changed. Everything jumped in price and it was infuriating. Puerto Rico is a territory, like the U.S. Virgin Islands, with the same United States Postal Service as the states.

After much thought and research, I made the decision to try to make it work. I had to make some financial pain adjustments and begin purchasing from other companies that sold high quality ingredients and bta-free bottles. The catch was that it was in smaller quantities, instead of the wholesale arrangement I had before. This of course resulted in having to charge a little more for the natural hair care products I sell because I didn’t want to sacrifice in quality. It saved in having to charge my customers much more seeing the new companies didn’t charge international shipping fees.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Adassa Ramirez and I am the founder of my small natural hair care business called, MicMas ReMiX. My small business is called, MicMas ReMiX. I personally handcraft oil formulations myself for coarse, coily and dreadlock texture hair. It all began when I became a mom, I stopped putting relaxers in my hair and returned to using only natural ingredients, such as olive oil and coconut oil, like my mom would when I was a child. I had to relearn my hair texture after I did a “big chop”. My family and girlfriends saw the results my sons and I were getting with the hair recipes I would make up for us. They then asked me to make some bottles up for them and loved their results, as well. I decided to start selling my hair oil formulations and MicMas ReMiX was birthed!

It has been an amazing journey and I am fortunate to have caught the media attention of Oprah, Essence, People En Español, Teen Vogue, BuzzFeed, among many others. This exposure has helped tremendously in also sharing MicMas ReMiX’s message that “todo pelo es pelo bueno” because hair texture doesn’t determine if it’s good or bad. Through MicMas ReMiX a portion of the sales proceeds have been used to make donations to different charitable organizations and to purchase school supplies for children through Operation Backup (Puerto Rico), hurricane relief for Puerto Rico (Maria and Fiona), Bahamas (Dorian) and earthquake relief (Puerto Rico). I am most proud of being able to pay it forward through my small business and have the opportunity to be boots on the ground giving back to the community in Puerto Rico, as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As a multi-passionate person, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my interests. Whether it be volunteering, teaching extra classes or participating at an event for my small business. I tend to overextend myself when I see things I like or want to be a part of that I feel passionate about. Last year, I had two amazing opportunities present themselves to me, within weeks of each other, by people I did volunteer work with. I struggled with making a decision which was when I realized that I had to unlearn worrying about disappointing others and that it’s not selfish for me to say no. This also helped me become aware of how I was not asserting my boundaries with myself. I came to a place where I acknowledged that not every opportunity is meant to be taken and that is perfectly fine.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

MicMas ReMiX started with only handcrafted hair care oil formulations and all hair oil products continue to be handcrafted in small batches. My Porosity is a best seller and this lightweight hair oil works great in low porosity hair but has received great feedback for different hair types, as well.. Our Neroli Antioxidant Vegan Shampoo and Tropical Deep Conditioner are vegan products which are manufactured.

They are the newest products to the brand and I decided to start selling a shampoo and conditioner due to so many requests I received to pair with the hair oils. I like this manufacturer a lot because they sell high quality organic and vegan oils and butters wholesale. It was an easy decision to make with finding a vendor who could manufacture the type of shampoo and conditioner I wanted for my customers. Of course, there’s the issue with the international shipping fees but I haven’t been able to find another manufacturer that comes close to their exceptional quality of vegan shampoos and conditioners.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.micmasremix.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/micmasremix/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micmasremix/

Image Credits
All images belong to me.