We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sean Prince a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Sean, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
How did I come up with the idea? That’s a very great question. Where do I start! You see, I was always into skincare and scent ever since I was a little boy. When I was 12, I used to put my grandma perfume in my body lotion just to that I can smell great when I go to school or out playing with friends. I remember back in high school I used to buy perfume, yes, I said perfume not cologne, at the store and add it to raw shea butter with some coconut oil and used it as a body lotion. Body butter wasn’t that famous then, so you get the drift. A few dollar store jar I was all set. I sold them for $5 a piece being the boss I was. When I got to college, I became an Avon rep and was selling products at school and to people in my apt complex. Avon had some amazing cologne and perfume and I used to buy for myself to add to the shea butter to make my body butter to sell in college.
When my son was born, he suffered from severe eczema. It was so bad that we used to have to wrap his hands with face cloth as he used to scratch his skin until it bleeds. The pediatrician used to prescribed ointment to use on him but it was only good for so long. It would soothe his itch for a few mins and then it was back to square one. We would get different prescription and try something new every so often for him based on what the pediatrician prescribed to him. At age 1 I told his mom that we had to do something as the eczema were getting out of control. It was time for me to do something and that’s when the 12-year-old that used to experiment with things for my body, decided to whip something up for him. I google things that were safe to use on infant that won’t cause any harm to their body. After a quick google research, I remember how I used to add Vegetale oil in my mom coconut oil with sugar and scrub my feet in the shower. Then I decided that I was going to mixed coconut oil, peppermint oil, arrowroot power and rub it on my son skin to see if it will help with his itching. His mom was scared that I would have made it worst but thank God I didn’t. From that day forward we never spent a dime on prescription for him and the Dr wasn’t really 100 okay with my invention but it worked so that was that. I gave a jar to a friend of ours’s at the time who lived in the same building as us, since her 5 year at the time had eczema too. It worked for her daughter, and we were fine.
Although I wasn’t making any body butter for sale after college, I was still making them for myself. So, when the pandemic took place in spring of 2020 and my job at the time which was an essential service, working at a storage facility as a store manager. My hours were cut from 40 a week to 25-30 a week. I knew that wasn’t going to cut it for me. Thats when I started making butters and lip balm for sale and was doing well because of the people I knew. My boss at the time asked me why I don’t sell online. And I was like you know that’s so true. But how? I had no idea how to build a website. I started asking my customer if they knew anyone that designed website to let me know. Then one of my customers gave me the number for a friend of his who was a web designer. While the site was being build, I paid Legal Zoom to get my LLC started. I can’t remember how long it took, but I believe it was 4 or 5 weeks the package from Legal Zoom came to my house. I then paid to get a newpaper published an ad that I was now operating a business, as per NYC Law. I tell people that google is your best friend. From what I knew or the little I knew about making my own body butter, google was such a huge help in guiding me on the right path as per the different types of oils and raw ingredients that are great for the skin etc. By May-June of 2020 my site was live on Shopify. It was very hard because no one was buying, and I had to send txt and IG messages to people I knew and strangers asking them to check out my site. Some made purchases others didn’t. Few months later I started experimenting with other things for my site, from body oil to body scrub and face cleaner etc. Sales was pouring in more once I added other products to my site. I have repeated customers and many referrals.
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?
My name is Sean (pronounced-SEEN) like I have seen you before. lol but true. I am a social worker by profession, a dad to a 16-year-old son who is a Jr in high school. I am cook, world traveler, avid swimmer, I hate summer and love anything winter. I am also a bodybuilder. The main thing that got me into skincare was my love for scented lotion as a little boy. Like I said before, I used to add my grandma perfume to shea butter and mix it up and lotion my skin with it to smell good at school or playing outside with friends. Having a child with severe eczema was a plus in me wanted to start my own skincare line. I wanted used things on him that were safe and free of harmful chemicals. I don’t think I would have ever made a eczema cream if my didn’t suffer from Eczema when he was born. The things I used to whip up for him as a infant is the the same things I used in the eczema butters that are on my site and it works.
I make a range of skincare products made with only natural ingredients and nothing that is harsh to the skin. You can get anything from beard oil, beard balm, beard wash, deodorant, body wash, body oil, body butter, face cleanser, face scrub, body butter and so much more. The name of my company is Prince Skincare. I chose that name only because I wanted something that means something to me. Having the last name is powerful, unique and its royalty.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
Funding my business wasn’t a walk in the park. I thought it was a great idea to ask a very good friend of mine for money to get started on my business, but it wasn’t. He told me he doesn’t like mixing friendship and money. Was I mad at him? No, I wasn’t. Was I upset? No, I wasn’t in the slightest way ever. Was I disappointed? Heck yes, I was, and heartbroken at the same time. But I focused on my own journey when I was in college, and I used to loan money to a friend of mine and never got a penny back. Not a single red cent was given back to me. Mixing money and friendship is definitely not a great combination at all.
All of my funding for my business came straight from my saving acct. From paying Legal Zoom to get my LLC to the building of my website, logo even the buying of raw material and equipment’s. Thank God I learned how to save for rainy day. I was sad that I had to dipped into my savings, as the bank won’t give me a loan because of one and only one thing. My credit. It was in under 250 and this was 2020. Now we are in 2023 and my score is 600 plus. Thank God that taught me a lesson.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
They say you have to fail to in order to succeed in life and this is something I believe in strongly, only because I have experienced it in my lifetime many of times. When I started introducing other products to my site, I thought it was all good after trying it myself for a few times and had my coworkers used the product on themself before I could make adjustment. I remembered making lip scrub and deodorant for the first time.
The sugar were coarse brown sugar and my friends and coworkers said was good. I thought it was okay but for the online customers it was a big no no. I had to remove those lip scrub from my site and try making them with granulated sugar instead and adding more oils, so the sugar grains won’t get dry and hard like the first batch. That was a success but before adding them back to my site I had the same coworkers try them and other folks who never tried the first batch. I wanted to get different feedback. It was positive and this time I believed my coworker’s feedback. The first batch they said they were okay and this time I got “They were great” They went back on my site and the customers who purchased the first batch that weren’t so good. I sent each of them a lip scrub free of charge without them asking.
As for the deodorant it’s a funny story I still laugh when I think about it. They were more of a paste than a solid. I thought they weren’t dry properly, so I left them alone for a week and went back and start using them again and all that was coming out was paste. It was like squeezing tooth paste out of the tube. I was like this suck. I wanted to just stop making them all together for sale. Then I said let me try again. It took about 5 different times using different formula and adding more beeswax until I was able to get them into a solid deodorant that you can twist the cap and its actually solid that came out. Although they were on my site, I didn’t get any sale from them, and I still didn’t remove them from the site unlike the lip scrub. Why you asked? Well, no one made a single purchased in a month from those deodorant so I figured by the time I get the formula right and someone purchased one, they will be ready to go the way a solid deodorant is supposed to be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://princeskincare.com/
- Instagram: @princeskincare2020