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

Alright, Onyinye thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

Prior Job Experience At my previous job, I worked as the Personal Assistant to the Managing Director of an IT firm for about a year. Honestly it feels like that job prepared me for what I needed to do when I started Berura Hair Care.

A Managing Director is one of the important pivots of an organization so imagine being the Personal Assistant, it was like I was assisting the whole firm at once. I was in charge of his personal schedule, I had to know all the contracts the firm was executing and the current stage of each one. I also had to follow up all account officers and managers and be up to date on their progress.

It was a lot, but I learned a lot about effectively multitasking and the experience helped increase and improve my work-stress levels. When I started Berura Hair Care, I was in charge of everything – from designs, production to packaging, customer care, product dispatch and so much more. It was not as difficult as it should have been as I had experience in taking a lot of responsibilities at a time without failing at my previous job.

My audience is getting wider and the tasks are doubling but I know I have the skill set to handle what comes with this work and also train others to do same.

Onyinye , 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?

Interesting fact, I attended a boarding secondary school where we had to keep our hair cut throughout the six years of our schooling, so for a long time I didn’t have to bother about my hair yet, I was looking forward to getting to keep it. At long last I graduated and then began to let the hair grow but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I knew nothing about what to do to keep hair on my head yet I really wanted long hair.

So I began to research and learn, I found out about what it takes to first keep healthy hair and realized from there, retaining length would not be an issue. I learnt about products and tried them, all the techniques and “rules” surrounding taking care of kinky hair and with time I realized my hair was growing but not staying. And it didn’t seem as healthy as I wanted. Products didn’t do the magic for me that it seemed to do for others so, I turned to DIYs.

I started mixing ingredients myself, you know especially for deep conditioning, keeping track of my progress and I noticed the purely natural mixtures I made were working for me! I became so excited and finally started enjoying the journey and my hair began to bloom – then the questions and comments started. “What do you do to your hair?” “Are you half-caste?” “Your family must have good hair genes.” Then I noticed a lot of people wanted what I wanted but didn’t know how. Most of them were suffering from lack of guidance just like me and a lot of people were having problems finding products that did that “magic” for them.

So I became moved to help them make their dreams come true. I started guiding people and letting them try my DIY formulas and they were getting results! I started getting referrals and a lot of people wanting to give value for my time and guidance and then I realized that helping people come to know and love the hair growing out of their hair just like God made it to be gave me fulfillment and made me feel happy. I watched people begin to feel better about themselves just because they started to accept and love their natural hair and I decided to live for that.

I started to learn to refine my formulas, I took a course of formulating and production and soon had my products packaged. I started out as “Zoe Organics” but had to rebrand and now we are “Berura Hair Care.” It wasn’t easy but I got a lot of support from family and friends, at a point it was my mother doing the deliveries for me, a friend of mine put my mind at rest in terms of content and copywriting and a lot of friends were eager to tell everyone they knew about what I do.

Berura Hair Care doesn’t just want to tell you our products are the best and sell products to you and push products down your throat, we want you to get to meet, accept, love and grow your hair the way it is supposed to be. This is why we offer consultation and guidance as part of our services, we can even teach you techniques if that is what you need because if you don’t find that path and regimen peculiar to you, you might never unlock the “magic” within our products. Yet we formulate them in such a way that even with the most basic of knowledge, you will see results, it’s just all so wonderful.

I enjoy music too besides helping people unlock their natural hair beauty and I can say I’m a really good singer. Fun fact: I have actually been a recording artist and hope to go back to it soon. I’m a proud wife and home maker and the mother of a lovely one year old, you need to see his hair! At Berura Hair Care, young old and every age in between can find answers and a solution to their hair needs, we even have a kids product collection.

I hope my background story and introduction didn’t bore you out, I love what I do. We at Berura Hair Care look forward to making this journey of beauty and self discovery with you!

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

Where do I even begin? So many experiences helped me build resilience on this journey. So many times I started and had to stop, or take a break. There was a time I took a break for about a year because of lack of funding. I took a job and worked so I could earn money to use it as capital. After that, I had to completely rebrand and change the name of my business because of trade mark problems.

The number of times I had to stop and start again, one will think I’d give up, instead it helped me build resilience and I am grateful I have come this far, and I can say for a fact I’m steady and making progress fast and I pray and know it will always be that way.

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

The story of my initial capital and funding is a story of God’s favour and leads to another interesting fact about me. When I was in university, I cooked food as a source of income. Yes, I’m a really good cook because I like food too. People loved my cooking and were willing to pay for it so I started taking orders and delivering delicious home cooked meals. I had a friend who loved to blow my trumpet and always recommended my food to people she knew, especially people well to do and well connected.

I once cooked for this man who was really impressed and reached out to me. He asked what my plans for the future were, if I wanted to own my own restaurant and what I intended to do with my life. By this time I had been a recording artist, had started my natural hair care journey and had started helping people grow their own hair. I already knew that was what I wanted to do with my life so I told him. I told him I wanted to have my own hair care brand and line, package and sell my original formulas and guide people towards achieving healthy hair. He asked how much I needed to start and I gave him a quote at that time. That kind and generous man sent me the money I needed to start! I added what I had realized from selling my delicacies and that was how I was able to start locing my dreams.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.berurahaircare.com.ng/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/berurahaircare?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Image Credits
Onyinye Ike