We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Regina Disilvestro a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Regina , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

I never thought I’d experience the kind of issues that I have working in this field. While the majority of the time you don’t run into problems, there are some that occasionally pop up and when they do it’s usually completely out of left field or unwarranted and largely based on misunderstandings.

A few years ago when we had our retail store in Little Italy, I had a customer enter into the shop prepared with a jar of water, syringe and serum container she had purchased and used from us previously. She asked to speak with the manager, then mentioned that she was a pharmacist and understood gram and milliliter quantities and she was upset because she thought we were mislabeling our serums saying they contain 15gm of material whereas she came to prove to me that they only held 5gm of product. She proceeded to pull out the syringe, sucked up 15ml of the water she brought with her and then tried to fill her used serum container with it to prove to me that it will only hold 5ml not 15ml, then accused me of fraudulently labeling our products.

I excused myself to grab one of the new containers from the back of our store (we manufactured in the rear), then asked to use her syringe and water and filled the new container with 15ml of water. Then capped the bottle and began pumping out the water onto the counter and as it was pumping out, you can see the internal bottom cartridge moving upwards, minimizing the remaining volume in the container from the original 15ml to the finished version of 5ml when all the material was pumped out. You could see the confusion in her face change to understanding as she watched it move upwards towards the top of the container.

After showing her this and explaining that these are airless containers and are designed to have the bottom cartridge move up as the material is pumped out to reduce the open head space in the container, making the product less prone to oxidation and preserving it longer, she quickly saw the error of her ways, apologized and said overall she loved our products. I told her, I understood her concern, appreciated her efforts to prove me wrong, but I wouldn’t try to jeopardize our products and company by intentionally mislabeling a product and creating concern.

There are many other issues that have come up over the years and as we grow we get our lovely share of more wonderfulness in the form of vendor issues, ingredient or harvest changes, price changes, employee regulations, lawsuits and so much more. Unfortunately, all those issues take away time, energy and money from us making more products or improving on the current ones which is a shame for those people out there that really need cleaner, healthier products so they can live longer, better lives.

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.

I started the business almost 20 years ago when I was 25 out of my one car garage in an alleyway in City Heights, CA. At the time I was working as a research chemist for a pharmaceutical company and as great as that was, I knew that my time would be limited there by the volatile biotech industry laying off employees or not having the credentials required in the scientific community to move up in that field against my colleagues.

Therefore, after making herbal products (aromatherapy, extracts, oils and such) for friends and family over the years, I decided to start making them into a more legitimate business and did so nights and weekends for 6 years before quitting my day job at the pharmaceutical company to go at it full time. Over the years we have created over 300 products from skincare, body care, haircare, makeup, pet products, supplements and more and have grown from my one car garage to a 9000 sq. ft. facility in San Diego and the best part is, I can still can do R & D on medicines but now bring them to market so much faster than the usual 10-15 years pharma needs to prove safety and efficacy. Granted they may not cure cancer (yet), but they are an integral part of everyday health and wellness for many.

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

We manufacture over 300 products, for our brand and other companies and while my background is in herbalism and chemistry, I didn’t know how to make a simple emulsion when I started out. I remember trying to make a lotion in my one car garage with my lab partner / friend who worked with me at the pharmaceutical company and failing miserably. It’s bad enough to try to do something new, but when you have 2 college educated chemists doing something which seems simple and should be in our knowledge base and it still doesn’t work, then you feel really defeated. But alas, even in the days long before YouTube or Googling “how tos” was common and after much trial and error, we figured out the error of our ways.

Besides experimenting with lotion basics, over the years I have had to learn, re-learn and adjust our production. Every time you scale up you may need to either re-work the formula or re-work the procedure on how to run the run. Our larger runs, where we make and fill thousands of products are always a fun challenge. You have to decide to do those either in multiple small batches or see if they can be adjusted and made and filled adequately in a larger version, then choose, set up and optimize the machines and ingredients and procedures to run properly.

Nowadays, I have my production team troubleshoot and brainstorm with me when we have to figure out the best way to do something given the resources. This gives them the opportunity to expand their knowledge and explore options beyond our usual procedures.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Our company does have multiple revenue streams and though it makes it a bit difficult to keep track, it’s highly necessary in such a volatile economy. Skincare is a huge industry and nowadays the “natural and organic” industries are more popular than ever making our competition greater and even worse since the pandemic hit. When one platform slows down or if they have issues (Amazon bots love to deactivate your pages for whatever reasons) we need to make up for our losses via other streams of revenue.

We sell our products directly to consumers on our website and also via Amazon, but also sell to holistic professionals for them to use the products in their services and / or retail them as well. We also provide private label, custom formulation and contract manufacturing, plus classes and seminars.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rdalchemy,com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rdalchemynaturalproducts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rdalchemy
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rdalchemy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rdalchemynp