We recently connected with Maya Hyppolite-Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Maya, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Morganna’s Alchemy’s 20-year adventure began at a dining room table. After years in the industry, Maya Hyppolite, our CEO, had just developed her first product, Break the Hourglass, and began selling it to friends and family. Break the Hourglass was an anti-aging formula that users swore diminished wrinkles, dark spots and other signs of aging. Users swore by it, calling it “magic”. What started as a home business grew quickly as word of mouth spread. Soon, our home business became a full-time pursuit. We developed a wide array of new products that our customers loved. It was time to create a company to manufacture and market them. But what to call it?

We looked for a name, we wanted to convey our customers’ sense of “magic and we thought “Who was the most powerful magician? And we thought of Merlin from the old King Arthur tales. But we felt our company was best represented by his female counterpart in those stories, Morganna.

Morganna’s art was to collect plants and herbs and work them into magic potions. So do we. Morganna’s Alchemy uses only the finest natural ingredients in its award-winning formulas. This is our “alchemy”. Many years ago, alchemists sought to turn lead into gold. Our Morganna followed this goal . . . but just a bit different. Instead of turning lead to gold, we focused on turning age into beauty.

And that is how we came to be.

Maya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As far back as I remember, I wanted to be a doctor. But the more medical science I studied, the more paranoid I became about everyday life. I was convinced I had come down with every new sickness I studied. In a single semester I went from having sickle cell anemia to lupus to just plain old, generalized cancer. Working in a hospital did not make things any easier, because I saw first-hand all of the pain and suffering people go through. It was time to make a change. I applied for a job as a lab technician for a company that made antiperspirant and deodorants. The moment that I walked into the research lab I knew; this was my kind of work. Science mixed with creativity. From that moment I started dreaming about my having my own factory.

Some years later I started Morganna’s on a kitchen table in Belgium, with an anti-aging cream I created, called Break the Hourglass.

I made a lot of skincare products that I would send to my neighbors via my son and his bicycle. One day my aunt asked me to develop a product that would allow her to go through longer periods of time in between her Botox™ treatments. She did not want to stop the treatments, but she occasionally would get flu-like symptoms for two weeks after each session., She needed a product that would help her go through longer periods of time between treatments. That is how the Elixir came to be.

I started to notice that with no marketing and only word-of-mouth to reach potential customers, the requests for more bigger amounts of the Elixir were coming. No one had told me that they were giving to their friends …

A year after inventing it, I put the Elixir one day and the effects were astounding. I even had to stop the car while I was driving to call my best friend and say, “This stuff works!” She answered, “I told you so.” That’s when I realized Morganna’s Alchemy could be a business. The whole thing quickly became a family affair with my children always helping to make small samples and product

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the great ironies about my business is how it started to took take off in Europe more than the US. In 2009, I applied to sell our products on the French shopping Network in Paris. Their policy was to only do business with EU corporations. I ended forming a separate Morganna entity that took one and a half years to finally create. This contract help enter us into Europe, where we sell till this day

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We manufacture all of our products. It did help that I was initially a cosmetic chemist who worked in the industry for 15 years before starting my own business. However, there are many aspects of manufacturing that I had to learn along the way. When I finally was able to purchase an 80 gallon jacketed kettle emulsifier, the installment was very difficult, as it was no longer the type of equipment one can just plug in, and get start making lotions. Following strict protocol on how to use this equipment and obtaining a good product is another level on learning

Contact Info:

• Website: www.morgannasalchemy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morgannasalchemy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorgannasAlchemy
• Linkedin: @maya hyppolite
• Twitter: @morgannasal
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxixH9dFDoohCOkdDM5g4w

Image Credits
https://www.instagram.com/lnolstudios/