We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dyana & Carla Molinelli. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dyana & Carla below.

Dyana & Carla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share a customer success story with us?

We have many happy customers that express how much they loved our products, or how well it has worked for them. One of our best sellers at the moment is the Foot Spray with magnesium oil, we get constant 5 star reviews on it, here are a few of them:

Jul 23, 2022

5 out of 5 stars
This is a miracle spray for my husband’s feet! He had blotchy red sore skin on the bottoms of his feet from working and this instantly healed them and helped with his pain. Will Def be buying again!

Jun 12, 2022

5 out of 5 stars
I have ordered this twice. I will order this again. If you have tired, achy feet…this is a miracle.

Dec 2, 2021

5 out of 5 stars
Excellent product. My husband has used it for 4 days and can already feel his skin softer, does not dry out and feels relief when his feet are tired.
Something to note is that it is easy to use, very important for those who do not usually take the time to use creams or lotions. Widely recommended..

We have also a very happy customer that has psoriasis, she can’t use any lotion or body wash because it will make her skin and psoriasis worse. So we went ahead and did a lot of research on what essential oils will help her and we made a custom body and hand cream for her, she absolutely loved it and it’s been helping her skin feel better. She keeps coming back for more when is running low.
We love to make our customers happy.

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

We were born in South America, Uruguay, my sister Dyana moved to the States with our parents in 2001 and I followed in 2003. I was diagnosed with lupus about 9-1o years ago, due to that my skin is very sensitive prone to dryness.

So, I started looking into natural soaps, body wash, skincare related products, but soon realized how difficult it is to find products without harsh chemicals that hurt my skin and cause me more pain.

Finally, I decided to learn more about the benefits of natural ingredients and I started incorporating them in my skincare routine and making my own products, I found essential oils and the great benefits they have. It’s amazing what nature offer us.

After a few year of using them, my sister Dyana and I have the unique blends for better, brighter skin.

Due to the pandemic, we finally decided to open up our online store and the support we have received from family, friends and loyal customers that keep coming back, we are just grateful.

We are slowly growing, learning along the way. Hoping to get our products in local stores.

Now we want to share these wonderful products we use for ourselves with other so everyone can benefit.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

We definitely started this as a side hustle, we weren’t sure if it was going to work out or not but we went all in. Doing research on products, on material, looking for suppliers. Once we figured out where to start we went ahead buying everything we needed and slowly started creating a variety of products.

After 2 years it has turn into a full time business, there is always challenges like slow seasons but we always stay busy either creating a new product or marketing. Dyana spends a lot of time on social media posting, sharing and creating interest in new potential customers, keeping in contact with our recurring customers as well.

We have encounter bumps on the road as expected when you start something new, but the support of our family and friends is definitely a big motivation for us to keep going, and customers send us messages on how much they loved our products well that just makes everything better.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We started selling on Etsy first, build our store along side with our Facebook page. Started getting the word around on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Every ecommerce has pros and cons, some of them require you to pay a monthly fee, which if you are just starting doesn’t sound like the best idea because you don’t have earnings yet. Other the listings fees and extras fees they have is more than what you want to spend specially if you want to keep your prices competitive.

So, we decided on Etsy because we found it easier to use, very simple to setup our store, the fees weren’t monthly which to us was a plus, and they have a handbook where they guide you on what to do. We had a good start overall there, we have our loyal customers that keep coming back. We are glad we started there.

But there are also cons with Etsy, like customer service or help for sellers, is hard to get someone to help you on the phone, there is only e-mail which can be frustrating when you need help quickly.

We suggest to do your research on ecommerce platforms, not everything is going to work the same for other business owners. That’s why we have also expand to eBay, Facebook marketplace, our Facebook business page, and at this moment we are working in our own website.

Contact Info:

• Website: dolcevitasoaps.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dolcevita.soaps/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dolcevitasoaps

Image Credits
Molinelli’s Photography