We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Purvi Desai. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Purvi below.
Hi Purvi, thanks for joining us today. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.
I have experienced this twice in my career. First, when I was offered to either take the job which was moving to another state or take the severance pay. After working in the Finance field for 10 years, all of a sudden I was out of work and not able to find the job which could pay the same level salary. During my search for the job, I pursued something I was really passionate about which was wellness lifestyle. I started my own small business while still looking for desired position in the field of finance. I was learning from scratch how to make products, package, sell, market & much more. Something I had no idea nor learned how to do. It was all trial and error, customer feedback and doing something which I was really enjoying. After failed to find the right position, I decided to make my hobby a full time career while raising two small children (Newborn & 18 months old). I would teach myself how to run business and grow online business online while both of my kids take naps and go to bed at night. For 4 years, I had a strict schedule for kids and myself where I would run household and grow my business. Things took off and my so called hobby was now full time business. I was having steady orders to keep myself busy. Things took U-Turn again when I started receiving wholesale inquires. Once again, I had to learn how to shift my business plans to fulfill wholesale orders and how to scale up the production to meet the volume. During this process, we landed Costco as our major account. Working with Costco has been an institute of it’s own. Handling massive orders, shipping on time, customer service and much more made us prepared for anything. Each U-turn seemed so scary at first but with positive mindset we took each challenge with the right attitude which defined our business to reach to the next level. All these U-turn helped us making it to Forbes Next 1000 list in 2021.
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?
Our business is about creating all natural and handcrafted bath and beauty products. I was always passionate about natural living and using the natural ingredients in my daily lifestyle. I call myself an accidental entrepreneur, where I turned my hobby into business out of a necessity. Not able to find the right products for my acne and uneven skin tones, I was creating my own face masks, scrubs and toners with simple but effective kitchen ingredients. This lead me to start my wellness company which only focuses on creating all natural bath and body care products. While selling my freshly made products at a local farmers market, I learned more about what customers are actually looking for and are having hard time finding the right products, more natural scents and products for men. We started our business with 3 products and now have more than 40 products. All of our product ideas come from our customers. We have been in business for 11 years and have grown organically because of many happy customers who have become our loyal buyers and also have turned many of their friends and family into one as well. We have had many proud moments – Seeing our brand on Costco.com, getting major PR features on Good Housekeeping, Good Morning America, Vogue Teens, Readers Digest, Buzzfeed & HuffPost & our biggest proud moment was when I was featured on Forbes 1000 Next List.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Not in just my filed but any field, the most important skill one should have is persistence and not be afraid to fail. Every failed opportunity comes with a very valuable lesson that can never be learned otherwise. My favorite quote is “Don’t be afraid to fail, be afraid not to try”
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Every entrepreneur wakes up with an idea and a strong belief that that’s the one. The challenges and obstacles begin when you start working on that idea. It’s very important to know how and when to pivot during the process. During my journey, I felt very strongly about many of our initial branding and products. The best approach I took was to give a timeline for each concept, measure the progress and make a decision to pivot or scrap.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.zaaina.com
- Instagram: @zaainaskincare
- Facebook: @zaainaskincare
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purvi-desai-018a935