We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Manuela Valenti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Manuela below.
Manuela, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I didn’t, it actually fell on my lap, but it started without me knowing it at a very young age. I’ve suffered from horrible chronic dermatitis all my life. My body is 90% scarred because of it, and somehow I made peace with the fact this life of itching and scratching and bleeding and scars was the way it was going to be for as long as I lived.
Parallel to this I grew up listening to the countless stories of my family back in Italy during the war. The horrors they had to go through, and how they overcame adversities in the most inventive of ways. One of those stories was of how my grandmother used to make soap for her and her three boys during WWII. As a single mother of 3 and in the middle of a war, let’s say, life wasn’t easy and things didn’t come from a supermarket back then. But those stories your parents tell you as a kid and adolescent, that you think are just that, stories, sometimes mean more than what we give them credit for.
In 2003 I found some relief in the form of a soap, just a simple, not perfect, but nonetheless miraculous soap. In finding a way to create my own soap to end or at least mitigate in a more permanent way my decades of discomfort, it was revealed that the history of my family soap making endeavors came with a centuries old recipe that my dad was holding on to who knows what for.
That little recipe and almost a year of learning, studying and formulating, gave birth to a wonderful soap for me, which I didn’t have the least of intentions to sell to anyone. As fate would have it, the final batch of this soap making adventure of mine, produced much more soap than I could have ever used in a year. Having at the time a large database of my own personal art collectors, I decided to reach out and offered these soaps to anyone that would have them. I think I priced them at $5 at the time, or something like that. I sold out in less than 24 hours. I thought that was the end of it. About a week or so later my collectors started emailing me asking for more. After a lot of talking and numbers, By Valenti Organics was born, selling just one soap.
Manuela, 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?
My name is Manuela Valenti, I’m a mother of 3, international artist, retired psychologist turned cosmetic chemist. I’m Italian by blood, Venezuelan by birth and American Citizen by choice. We moved to the US from Venezuela in late 1999, seeking to provide our special needs daughter with a better quality of life, after learning she was born with a very rare genetic disorder.
I’m a self-taught artist and I’ve been creating art since I was about 7 years old. Parallel to my career in psychology, was painting. As an artist I’ve exhibited in various countries and my works have been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines.
After my daughter’s death in early 2015, I put my brushes down. Art for me is inspirational, it’s motivated by feelings, and all I had after her passing were sorrow and dark feelings. I’m slowly now after all these years returning to painting and meet my collector’s demands.
How did you know your company, your products were going to work?
I didn’t know if my products, this new company were going to work. I’m known for being too impulsive in my decisions and tend to jump into things without thinking much.
One thing I knew from the get-go was to focus my brand, on products that would actually work on people with reactive skin like mine, with chronic dermatitis, or eczema, since until that point no matter what brand of cosmetics I used they all without failing made my skin react. So I knew there had to be someone just like me out there, that couldn’t shower with just any soap, or use any facial products without paying the price for doing so.
We focus on gentle skin care, bath & body products for people with dermatitis. What sets us apart from others, is that our products are an actual relief, because our products are tested on people that suffer from the same condition I do.
I’m proud of having being able to formulate not only products that work and have provided relief to thousands of our clients, but we have made them luxurious. We’re the only brand of luxurious skin care, bath and body products for people with dermatitis.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I started the company with my own funding, in the worse possible time, in early 2007 at the beginning of the worse recession we’ve had in years. We kept costs as low as we humanly could, and powered through until it was over.
And here we are again in 2022, with another recession and on top inflation. We’ll be ok.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’ve been an artist longer than I’ve been anything else. I started painting at the age of 7, I’ve been published in prestigious art magazines, I’ve exhibited in galleries around the world, and I even sold my works to pay many of my college expenses so I could receive a degree in psychology.
For most of my life all I knew was to paint and profile individuals, as I never went the private practice route.
This was my pivoting moment, when this new business presented to me out of nowhere. Even though in hindsight my parents were already setting it up for me without knowing it. I was terrified and excited at the same time. I had a degree in psychology which meant nothing, and I had a background in selling artwork. Up to that point I was selling my work for over 30 years and I was one of the first artists selling online before that was a thing, but the business of skin care I didn’t know much about, actually nothing at all.
The learning curve wasn’t that bad, going back to college to learn to properly formulate wasn’t that bad either, the thought of this not working was always on the back of my mind though, and is in the back of the minds of many entrepreneurs, even my parents. But I pushed through, and convinced myself that if it didn’t work, at least I did my best, I gave it a try.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.byvalenti.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/byvalentiorganics
- Facebook: facebook.com/byvalenti
- Twitter: twitter.com/byvalenti
Image Credits
All images credit By Valenti Organics and Manuela Valenti Studio & Gallery.