We recently connected with Johanne Nicoleau and have shared our conversation below.

Johanne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

Every since the start of my business, I have tackled the management of the different social media platforms myself. I am a notice I it, but I have found so far that I sustained it humbly. I am in the market for a very reasonable person that understand me and understand my vision to be able to take over the task so I can devote more time to my production.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi! My name is Johanne Nicoleau and I AM SAVONS DES ILES😊. I left the corporate world back in 2013 to be more present for my children. As time will tell, a few years later I was sending one of them to college. I am a mother of 2, wife to the “man with the brains, (my genius husband) and a fierce perfectionist entrepreneur who loves to learn.

Savons des Iles is a love story. It was created during a mother/daughter connection, because of a mother/daughter separation. When my daughter went away for University, I felt like the distance took away my motherly daily rituals. I would wake up in the middle of the night and check Johanna’s bedroom only to remember that she was away (chuckling here…:-) because I know what you may be thinking reading this). I questioned then how it must have been for my own mother who was even thousands of miles away (overseas) when I went to college myself.

I decided to talk with her looking for the motherly comfort that I so needed. While on a promenade, we stopped at a booth. My mother picked up a scented soap, gazed at me, and immediately we both knew what was going to fill my void. It’s just that simple! My story is not extraordinary, but it gave promises of better days. Soap making resulted from that connection with my mom. This newfound adventure developed into my passion and later because my “passionate business”. (By the way, Mom came up with the name of my business).

I think that I inherited a “drive” to help others to have access to authentic luxury: “what you see is what you get”…..more like “what you read on the label is exactly what you get” product. I am the definition of integrity and I wanted that integrity to transpire in my soap making. I value what nature offers us freely, but I also have a profound desire to elevate ingredients of my homeland. I wanted the world to know about our amazing vegetable tresors such as: castor oil, aloe plants, Moringa, vetiver, mango butter, sesame oil, Verveine, and so many herbs that all spout out of “bio, organic rich soil”.

Although I have been a Floridian most of my years, I am so proud that I decided to open up a branch in Haiti, because I would tackle 2 opportunities: One to be able to use natural products but most importantly to impact the lives of many farmers from which I would purchase all most ingredients. What is important for me to illustrate to my clientele, is that Haiti is me, Haiti is the farmers and the many other people trying to make their lives better by selling their arts, their crafts, their harvest, Haiti is those untouched arable lands that produce amazing non modified biological plants and herbs.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I do manufacture all my products. I am a bit of a perfectionist and a curious, eager learner. I make everything from scratch because I like to control what goes into the formulation. You understand that the products will actually be used on our skin and can be absorb into our body. It is then the utmost importance for the product to be as safe as possible for human use. I pride myself that I am able to share with anyone the confidence in the product by the natural, plant base ingredients it is composed with. I am have not yet pursued finding the vendor that emulate my vision but I know that there are many people out there in the field that do. I am blessed to have the sound network with opportunities to access them when I am financially ready.

The lessons I learned about manufacturing are simple: Disciplined and outstanding manufacturing processes. When, an employee is helping me, they follow the rules and it doesn’t matter if I made it or they made it because the end result will always be the same.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When I started “my hobby”, I used my own funds…I spent $45 to make my first batch of soap, then as I started to dig into the old fashion way of soap making, my savings supported it. I did have the unconditional support of my husband and my immediate family. As the business started to grow, and the clientele base started to be interested in my soaps, the sales from my line sustained further investments. 2 years into the business, I t0ok a line of credit. It helped a great deal. As I grow, I will rely on financial institutions or possible family investment interest to have access to funding. The bulk of the initial capital however came from a combinations of savings and family support.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.savonsdesiles.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savonsdesiles
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savonsdesiles
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/savons-des-îles/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/savonsdesiles
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/savonsdesiles
• Other: Contact us: [email protected]

Image Credits
Johanne Nicoleau