We recently connected with Quiana Curry and have shared our conversation below.

Quiana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our daughter developed eczema shortly after birth. She was our second child and I knew that her skin did not feel “normal.” There were not bumps or visible signs, but her skin felt a little rough. We went to see her pediatrician when she was four months old, and this is when she was diagnosed with eczema.

I knew nothing about the topic. I didn’t know what caused it; I didn’t know how to treat it. She was prescribed ointments with ingredients I couldn’t pronounce. Blindly, I placed the prescribed ointments on my baby. After a few days, each spot that I applied the prescribed ointment turned white. So, now my 4 month old baby has spots on her arms and legs.

I had so many questions.Why did my baby develop eczema? What causes eczema? How do I treat eczema? Can I get rid of eczema? I soon discovered there was no cure to eczema, but I could treat it naturally. I learned it was associated with allergens, and I was a breastfeeding mom, so I immediately made relatively dramatic lifestyle changes. Iwho stopped wearing chemically-filled perfumes, stopped getting my hair relaxed, stopped wearing fake nails and nail polish, and stopped using aluminum deodorant. Then, my husband and I started conducting research, reading scientific journals, and searching for a safe and natural solution to help my baby’s eczema. Eventually, we discovered a mixture of natural butters, oils, vitamins, and nutrients that worked. I was able to naturally treat my daughter’s eczema with an all-natural Eczema Balm. This is how Butter By Q was born. It was born out of the necessity to give my child a natural option to a skin disorder she was born with.

Our mission is to give the world a natural option for hair and skin care. We encourage others to read the labels. You should know what you are placing on your skin—your largest organ. If it’s on your scalp or skin, it will seep into your bloodstream. We have to be mindful. Everything that smells good is not good for you.

Quiana, 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 am a wife, a mother (soccer mom, karate mom and swim mom) a full time employee, and business owner. My husband and I started Butter By Q because we wanted to provide a natural solution for our daughter’s eczema.

Butter By Q is not our first business endeavor. We first started a T-Shirt business during COVID, but we didn’t get it off the ground. We don’t consider it a failure because it lead us to Butter By Q. We took what we didn’t know with the T-Shirt business and applied it to Butter By Q. One thing we didn’t have with our T-Shirt business was passion. It was an “Oh, I can do that!” “Oh, I can come up with good phrases for a shirt!” -But, I didn’t have a passion for making T-Shirts.

However, passion is what I have the most of for Butter by Q. I have a little girl, who is now four, that looks to me everyday to provide her skin comfort from her eczema outbreaks. A little girl who deserves natural ingredients and not chemically filled ingredients that her mom can’t pronounce.

It’s this passion that I want to spread all over the world to let everyone know that there are other options. We do not have to smell like rainbows and glitter. You know that chemical smell when you smell it. The scent that lingers for an hour after someone walked away. Unfortunately, the negative effects can linger for a lifetime, causing different cancers, especially among Black and African American women.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my business partner back in 2001 at the Florida State University College of Business. It was our sophomore year, Fall semester and an 8AM statistics course. We were both 19 years old and ready to take on the world. I was a Marketing major and he was a Finance major. We studied together and became friends, but never dated. At 19 he told me that he would find me one day and marry me. Well, he kept his word, we started dating 10 years later, married and had kids. Butter By Q is our 3rd baby.

We take what we have learned from FSU and our corporate careers and apply those learnings to Butter By Q. This is how we are able to maintain and operate our business solely between the two of us. My husband handles the web site and I handle the social platforms.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We currently manufacture all of our products. We have learned that there is a difference between a recipe and a formula. We have recipes, but we do not have the formulas.

Our mission is to offer and educate on the benefits of all natural hair and skincare products. We don’t have preservatives in our products, and they will melt if you leave them in a hot area. We have learned over the years that during the manufacturing process, the ingredients have to come to a certain temperature. If this temperature isn’t achieved, the product will not formulate correctly. You won’t know this at first, but after the product cools, then, you will see the issue.

We did not make these discoveries overnight. It has taken years to develop a recipe that works. We have been discussing opportunities to make our products scalable. We have talked to a chemist about what it would take to develop and own the formula for our brand and make large quantities, but keep the product all natural.

We have also learned that it takes more than just an LLC and a Canva account to run a business. It takes hard work, dedication, willingness to learn and courage to say what you don’t know to get through each day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ButterByQ.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ButterByQ/
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ButterByQ
• Other: linktr.ee/ButterByQ