We recently connected with Rajneesha Clayton and have shared our conversation below.

Rajneesha, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

After many years of experience in the world of retail and customer service and sales, I had a really broad understanding of how to pitch a product. So I started making sample batches of my product for friends, family, and work colleagues. After a month of give out samples I made my first sale to a work colleague. Which felt really good to see my hard work being appreciated. Which pushed  and motivated.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

My name is Rajneesha Clayton, I am the proud owner of Tha Purple Flower. I started on my journey in the world of skincare about 6yrs ago. Watching the world of beauty care putting so much focus into the make up industry, I knew it was my time to shine. I worked at a well-known beauty care store, and I saw the potential for my product sitting on their shelves one day. So I took matters into my own hands and created my brand in 2016. The road started was very rough. I had a lot of ups and downs and doubts, will this work, and I doing the right thing? Me doubting myself definitely put me into a mode of hibernation being in a cocoon. I needed a rebirth, so I stopped everything regarding business for two years.  The huge break I took, allowed me to truly understand who I was, and what I needed to change. I always look at things in life as an art canvas. You start out with a blank canvas, slowly you start to add colors. And I used that perspective as a guid. I renamed and re-created my business in 2020 to Tha Purple Flower.

Tha Purple Flower is a brand that celebrates nature. Every product and each product that I create is 100% plant-based. All of my skin & herbal body care products are handmade by me we also have a beautiful collection of rear stones / crystals.

next steps in my journey is to have a brick and mortar store,with and added  community garden and juice bar.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Growing clientele is such a tricky part of running a small business that a lot of us do not think about but what help me become more strategic in my ability to grow my clientele. To be honest, I didn’t mad about us to tegic way to interact or engage with clients again gained a lot of these skills from being in the world of retail and sales so once I started doing my vendor markets, it was like a walk in the park. Key things that I do.

• Attention to detail
• Answer questions
• Create relationships

90% of my customer interaction comes from my days, doing events or vendors markets, and just my every day interactions with people in life. When you become a small business owner, you don’t realize  you’re always advertising your business, and it just like that you’re building skills In marketing and clientele, even if they don’t purchase something from you that same day, you’re still creating some sort of connection with the client which will allow them to remember you and come back to your table or to your website and make that purchase. I have a small story I do want to share.

I had a vendors market on Congress Street here in Austin Texas and I meet all types of people at these markets every weekend. and out of the blue I received a DM on social media. It was a message from a client that I met at one of my markets on congress, not sure what weekend it was but she sent me a message to let me know that she just purchased all of my skincare products on my website and she enjoyed our conversation and she can’t wait to try my products. I was very excited this brought tears of joy to my eyes, because it just again reassured me that my interactions with my clients alone is a reflection create growth in clientele.

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

No, not really I just took the time out to learn and educate myself on what is a small business how do you run a small business? What are the pros and the cons of a small business and just those key benefits. I just took that knowledge and applied pressure to the goal. Manufacturing products and just the business in general is not an easy but I can proudly say that I produced and manufactured Tha Purple Flower.

Contact Info:

• Website: HTTPS://www.thapurpleflower.com
• Instagram: Thapurpleflower

Image Credits
Rajneesha C.