We were lucky to catch up with Kameko Grant recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kameko, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

As a person statistically destined to fail in this world of business I take very seriously the challenge to grow a company and be financially successful . All while making sure to not compromise the values that have brought me this far.

Showing my 4 children that despite as many hurdles as one may have, like being female, an Afro-Latina who was kicked out of their home as a teen, a teen mother with no traditional high school education, can still become an entrepreneur and business founder, launch a passionate career is making a positive impact on the world.

Kameko, 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?

I believe everyone deserves a home that is a healthy oasis free of toxins & chemicals. I had already implemented so many things in my everyday life trying to reduce waste, toxins and take better care of our planet and changing what I used to clean seemed like a logical next step. I had thought some of the brands I was using, were ‘green’ but then when i dug deeper I found brands like Mrs. Meyers and Method to still be so unsafe! Knowing every nasty chemical in these products were being absorbed into my children’s bodies & into our planet, I began the hunt for something that wasn’t going to poison my family, our water systems and wasn’t packaged in plastic. Trying to find a company that was Black owned on top of all of that made it mission impossible. So as one does, I started making my own cleaning products.

After doing a ton of research I began sourcing extremely effective yet non-toxic, eco-friendly and vegan ingredients. Yes, those do exist! I wanted to make sure there were no fake fragrances, parabens, sulfates or other ‘nasties’ in the cleaning concentrates or beauty items I was creating. On my journey I began to connect with so many like minded people, who were looking for a solution just like me and started asking if they could buy my products. So Good General Store was born out of this desire to honor not just our families but our collective home, Planet Earth.

So Good’s products are safe for you, your family and our planet. All of our cleaning solutions are concentrates are diluted at home, meaning 97% less water being transported, 87% fewer trucks on the road and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All our products are packaged in glass, a reusable + recyclable resource. In addition to our concentrates, we also offer clean, green bath and beauty products and sustainable home goods.

If you are a southern California resident you should also definitely check out our refill store on wheels! You can bring your containers to the pop ups and refill all of your So Good concentrates and pick up some new eco-friendly items for your home as well.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Sticking to my convictions and not taking shortcuts when it comes to the quality of our ingredients or efficacy has been so important to my customers. They can trust that So Good products are going to be everything we say they are, and trust is everything when it comes to reputation. I have the most amazing and loyal customers! I love hearing from them when I am in the trailer doing pop-ups, telling me how they ‘converted’ a friend or family member to finally using our products over other conventional ones.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I’ve always loved creating things whether it was developing a vegan caramel sauce or learning how to use a loom. I started dabbling in making bath and beauty products when I was a private chef in Bel Aire and I used to sell the products to the other chefs, drivers and staff as well as friends and fam.. When I started doing cleaning products shortly thereafter I had already built a little community surrounding these pillars of sustainability and eco-friendly living.

In the last three years I took So Good General Store from concept to actuality, from small trial runs that I had friends test run to a full line of product, from just selling off a folding table to a custom retail trailer and a thriving ecommerce platform. It’s been quite the ride!

Today we are still a very small family run business. I am the only full time employee and I get my oldest two kids working with me throughout busy times of the year and my partner Thomas has been my right hand when it comes to the trailer pop-ups and so many other things.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sogoodgeneralstore.com/
• Instagram: @sogoodgeneralstore
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sogoodgeneralstore/

Image Credits
Thomas Beckner