We were lucky to catch up with Tiera Coleman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tiera, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I’m currently 7-months postpartum and had my children 10+ years apart. I had taken maternity leave for about 6 months. During my pregnancy, I had shifted my nail business from being in my home, to being back in a public setting for a bit. I had been praying for ways to elevate my work, to make it so that I was making more of a positive impact. But also, not spread myself too thin. I had to start with work on myself, changing my diet & mindset to name a few things. As I started gearing to go back to work, my godmother had been coming to my home to help me out with my girls. She had mentioned a few weeks prior that she had watched this docu-series that I really needed to check out. Of course, with postpartum brain, I forgot. Then one day she came over and started scanning my things with an app telling me they had toxic ingredients, including but not limited to, carcinogens, hormone disrupters, etc. She told me to go on ahead to work and told me she’d send me the app and call her when I had a break in between clients. A few hours later when I called her, she had a 13 gallon trash bag full of items that needed to be tossed out because of the harmful things found in them. I was livid, especially because, as a licensed beauty professional, I have access to buying “the good” professional products. Plus, that one bag was only hair products and skincare. We hadn’t gone through my 3 train cases worth of ‘professional’ makeup or other items around my home or workplace. After finally watching the series, I am appalled at all of the misinformation that’s allowed to be put out there to consumers and beauty professionals alike. The skincare & food industries are severely unregulated and clearly choose profits over people. I started scanning more things at home and in my suite. I was shocked to find that my infants skincare products needed to go along with popular cereal brands, popular laundry detergent brands, fabric softeners, etc. My work trash bag wasn’t as bad because I had been making a good amount of my products for years, but my 8 bottles of $24+ hand lotions had to go and I was over it at that point. That’s when my ‘aha’ moment happened. Let’s pivot LunaSol Beauty as a Vegan-ish Spa! To my knowledge, people don’t tend to solve problems they don’t know are problems and in this case what you don’t know can hurt you. LunaSol Beauty has recently expanded to welcome 3 new team members and has gone completely mobile. Right now we’re working on expanding our service area and educating our new and existing clientele while we revamp our business to align with this new concept.

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?

Alaafia! My name is Iya Tiera Oyabi Coleman. I am the Founder/Owner of LunaSol Beauty, a vegan-ish mobile spa and online boutique. I am a 4th-generation entrepreneur and ever since childhood, I’ve been immersed in the beauty industry. My mother was a licensed nail technician and makeup artist for as long as I can remember. I began my journey as a nail technician in 2005, during my senior year of high school. In 2007, I completed my professional training at Maryland Beauty Academy of Essex, receiving my license in Nail Technology. In 2013, I began the leg of my journey as a professional makeup artist mainly working the bridal beauty industry for about 5 years.

My search for something more fulfilling to my soul made me take my first birth doula training in the summer of 2018. My own journey with my health led me to undergo my training to become a yoni steam practitioner in 2019. Although I’ve dabbled in herbalism as long as I can remember, I also started taking trainings with herbalist mentors in 2019 as well.

As with the beauty of birth there comes the inevitability that is death. Some of my experiences with having clients/loved ones pass on made it a natural next step that I’d take training to become a certified Diaspora Death Doula. Something some of us inherently do naturally for other, however, I took my training in Spring of 2021.

LunaSol Beauty aims to solve the problem that is the incognizant self-harm in self-care. Self-care in the form of services and products is something that a lot of people choose to do for themselves. Unfortunately, many people have a tendency to trust without question that the places and businesses that offer these services and the items they use and supply have our best interests in mind. Together with our in-house self-branded and carefully developed body care products, one day, we hope to have an abundance of spas that contribute to mitigating this problem.

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

The LunaSol Beauty brand of body care products I do manufacture myself for the time being. I personally have a history with eczema, however it wasn’t until I started gaining more clientele with uncommon allergies that I started to take my first steps with creating my own products. In the beauty industry, you’ll come across clients with an array of sensitivities and allergies. I currently have clients with peanut allergies, avocado allergies, and pineapples allergies to name a few. But a couple of years back, I had a client with an allergy to blue dye that gave me the initial spark to create my products. It was one particular appointment and I had sworn I checked all of the products I was using at the time. I had completed her pedicure service and had moved on to the massage portion when she had started breaking out in hives and started itching. Apparently, my ‘all natural’ professional pedicure cream had some form of blue dyes in it (a lot of professional products come with the ingredients on the initial box that product arrives in and not the actual jar & the cream appeared to be white). Thankfully, she wasn’t really upset, but I still felt really bad. I was determined to not make a mistake like that again, especially not when allergic reactions can be potentially fatal. It took me several formulations, but I finally had what I needed to perform my pedicure services (a soak, body scrub, and body butter). So originally it was for use with the services I provided, but I had several clients asking me if I’d make some available for purchase and thus I had a body care line.

I’ve taken a few breaks in between making products here and there over the years. Sometimes because of life, other times because of issues with suppliers, and other times to formulate & reformulate. The main lesson I’ve learned with this is to take breaks when necessary. When you’re tired and burnt out that energy can transfer into any and everything that you do. Give yourself grace, regroup, and make changes if necessary. That could be with your formulations, your processes, etc.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients is always your current clientele, in my opinion. Who other than those you adorn with your skill set/art to be your living canvas/advertisement? I can’t think of any. Especially with service providers, people usually want to know that they’re skilled at what they do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lunasolbeauty.com/shop
• Instagram: @LunaSolBeauty
• Facebook: Facebook.com/LunaSolBeauty
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiera-c-224640b5/