We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jilleo Recio. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jilleo below.

Jilleo , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

In 2018, I had the opportunity to live in Singapore. It was an exciting time as I had never lived abroad. My first job in Singapore was at an influencer marketing agency and subsequently, a major music label, where I held roles as a business development manager. Both places of employment required frequent traveling throughout Southeast Asia. I didn’t mind traveling as I had never been to these countries before, and I was excited to meet people and experience their culture. A bonus for me was access to skincare products from countries like South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. If you know me, I’m a huge skincare lover. While living in Asia, I naturally succumbed to their popular 10-step skincare routine. One day, I was packing my skincare products for a business trip when a jar of my face cream fell onto the floor, spilling its contents. This incident made me question my existing skincare routine and whether all these products were necessary to achieve healthy-looking skin. I was starting to feel overwhelmed every time I had to pack for a trip, and I was finding it difficult to be consistent with my lengthy skincare routine, particularly in the evening when I was exhausted from the day.

Adding to that, my roles at both places of employment involved managing brand partnerships for influencers and recording artists, particularly with beauty brands. A disturbing theme I noticed from these brands is their promotion of skin lightening and whitening. They were promoting the message that having fairer skin meant you were beautiful. Having traveled to all these beautiful countries and meeting countless people from all regions of the world, everyone with their unique shade and beauty, I had the idea for RĒJINS. I wanted to build a skincare brand that is made for skin of color, and champions culture, and diversity, while offering a minimalist approach to skincare.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Jilleo and I’m the founder of an inclusive and minimalistic skincare brand, RĒJINS. I don’t have a beauty industry background, but from a young age, I’ve always been interested in skincare. As a kid, my mother taught me the importance of cleansing your face before bed and first thing in the morning. I would watch her apply her face moisturizer and I remember some of it would rub onto my cheek every time she hugged me. Having a skincare routine was something that I grew up with. Back then it was Neutrogena and St. Ives Apricot Scrub. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve graduated onto other products, mainly focusing on well-aging as I’m now in my forties.

I never thought I would have my own skincare brand. If I had to trace back the steps as to how I got here, I would say it all began while I was living in Singapore between 2018 – 2020. As I previously shared, in Asia, the beauty industry is obsessed with skin lightening and whitening, pushing this false narrative that fairer skin equates to beauty. I remember witnessing women and men, injecting themselves with skin whitening solutions and using bleaching creams. I was shocked to see this firsthand. Another thing I noticed was the promotion of having lengthy skincare routines. While I didn’t buy into the skin-lightening falsehood, I did fall victim to the 10-step skincare routine.

In the years that I was living in Singapore, I was fortunate to travel to many countries that I would never have visited if I was living in the States. It was easy traveling throughout Southeast Asia as airfare was relatively inexpensive. I had the pleasure of meeting people from across all regions of the world, eating diverse foods, listening to their music, and celebrating their holidays. Experiencing their culture was beautiful.

Then in 2019, I had a life-changing event. My partner and I divorced after being together for 16 years. The divorce made me go through a transformation, where I began to embrace a minimalist lifestyle. In the years beforehand, I used to equate success and happiness with material things. I started to focus inward and thought about what truly mattered the most to me, and for me, that was travel and making memories from those trips. I began to declutter my life and one of the first places I started was my skincare products, as I always traveled with them!

It was through these experiences of living abroad that I began dreaming up RĒJINS. I want to reach people like me, and for us to be proud of our unique beauty, skin shades, and culture. Through this gentle act of a simplified wellness ritual, it allows us to appreciate the essence of simplicity, to give ourselves the proper care we need, and acknowledge the beauty of diversity that makes us part of a larger, interconnected world.

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

In 2019, I took a bold step by laying down the ground work of building my brand. I had never built a business and had no idea what I was doing. One of the first steps I took was attending the “in-cosmetics” exhibition in Seoul, South Korea. In order for me to secure meetings and to be taken seriously, I needed a registered business. I didn’t have one, so what I did was create fake business cards, and it worked! I was able to book meetings with ingredients suppliers and manufacturers. I navigated most of the show with uncertainty, but I networked extensively, establishing valuable contacts who later sent me ingredient samples. Throughout 2019, I diligently worked on developing my brand, testing ingredients and building relationships.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic struck, causing everything to come to a halt. I decided to return home to the U.S. to be closer to my family during these uncertain times. Unemployed and isolated, I underwent a deep depression, but it was my brother who encouraged me to persevere with RĒJINS. I resumed work on my brand and began formulating our debut product, the “All-Encompassing Serum.” Along the way, I encountered significant setbacks, including problematic partnerships with unsuitable chemists and labs, resulting in foul-smelling and/or separated formula samples. Additionally, finding a manufacturer with reasonable minimum order quantities (MOQs) proved challenging, as many required 5,000 or even 10,000 units. Despite these obstacles, I took it one day at a time and kept moving forward. It took a few years, including testing and finding a manufacturer with low MOQs, before finally launching my brand in April 2023.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for me has been in-person events and word of mouth.

I’m currently a small indie beauty brand and don’t have the budget for paid advertising. Instead, I’ve been growing my customer base through markets and word of mouth. The markets are a great way to interact with my customers and gather research, such as their buying behavior, demographics, what skincare brands they’re using, what ingredients do they look for in a product, and so on. I’ll utilize my brand’s social channels to let our followers know where our next event will be at, and a lot of the times they’ll show up and bring along their family and friends.

It’s rewarding when I’ll have a customer show up at one of my events and say they heard about my brand from a friend or family member, and how much they love the product!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rejinswellness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rejinswellness