We were lucky to catch up with Toyin Okezie-Mba recently and have shared our conversation below.

Toyin, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

E-commerce has become very competitive. It’s the basic principle of market analysis; ease of entry into any market correlates with high competition. Platforms like Shopify and other marketplaces have made it easy to launch an online business, digital ads can be purchased for as little as $5, and you can sell on Tiktok or Instagram. Consequently, it has become challenging to get discovered online. It has therefore become essential for any new brand to have in-person contact with their prospective customer. I would focus on Omnichannel sales and marketing if I were starting over. We spent thousands of our funds when we launched on digital marketing and advertising, from which we got meagre to zero return on investment. We began seeing traction when we took advantage of in-person sales and marketing opportunities.
You can take advantage of local markets, local retail outlets, etc. depending on which suits your business strategy.
I have found that marketing and customer acquisition with the best return on investment is when people can interact with you (the founder) and experience your products in person. It creates a bond and sense of loyalty that you don’t get with digital marketing nowadays.

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?

I am a mum of two wonderful kids; a six-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. I immigrated to Canada in 2017 with my husband and daughter, who was seven months old. I am a Chartered Professional Accountant with an MBA from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. I worked in the financial services industry for over a decade before launching Prettykind in 2021.
I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship and knew I wanted to start a business once we arrived in Canada. Hence, while pursuing my MBA, I was on the lookout for gaps in the market which I was positioned to fill.
When I relocated from Nigeria to Canada in October 2017, I brought enough beauty essentials for at least one year.
As my stash was almost depleted, I searched for my basic makeup, haircare and skincare products at Shoppers Drug Mart and Walmart. If you’re outside Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart is your typical neighbourhood drug store chain. I couldn’t find powder in my skin tone; the brow pencils were not the right shade of brown. The haircare products made caring for my curls and my daughter’s curls a task we anticipated with anxiety.
So, I replenished my beauty stash from Nigeria. My brother bought the products and sent them to Canada. I settled into this pattern. I accepted it as normal… until the global Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 when my stash ran out at the worst time possible.

That’s when it hit me. I live in Canada; I’m not visiting, I live here, and I’m raising a daughter who will have friends with diverse beauty needs based on their skin tone or hair type.
I immediately imagined the embarrassment, frustration, and negative impact on my daughter’s self-esteem when her friends can find products designed to work for them and she can’t. That’s how Prettykind was born.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The story of Prettykind has been one of constant pivoting. We started the business to make and sell makeup products to people of colour, and we outsourced product manufacturing, which I will discuss more when I answer the following question.
While waiting for the products to arrive, we leased a retail space in Brampton to be our physical store. This was when the first Covid restrictions were lifted in October 2022.
We had severe manufacturing delays due to the global supply chain problems during Covid, and we decided to start using the space to produce natural haircare products for people with curly and kinky hair. This was how we ended up launching Prettykind as a curly haircare brand.
We added makeup when the products arrived some months later.
In the past nineteen months since we launched, we have pivoted our haircare line from serving only people of colour to products for everyone. We launched with solid shampoos and conditioners, but now we have added liquid alternatives. We also recently launched a line of skincare products.
This series of pivots were informed by the feedback we got from the market. As an entrepreneur, you decide to launch a new business based on a set of hypotheses, but your survival depends on how you can adapt to the market’s reaction to your business.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We outsourced the manufacturing of our makeup products, but our haircare and skincare products are manufactured in-house. A friend referred the vendor who manufactured for us. Before we settled on this vendor, we got samples from manufacturers in several countries, including Canada. Amongst others, the factors we considered in selecting a manufacturer were the quality of the product, the cost per unit, and the minimum order quantity (moq) per shade of lipstick or foundation. However, outsourcing manufacturing creates the problem of carrying a considerable inventory that might be difficult to sell quickly when you’re a new online-only micro business in the beauty products sector, targeting only people of colour in Canada. It’s a multi-layered problem.
This issue of having our funds tied down in inventory was why we decided to take a just-in-time production approach to our haircare and skincare lines of products.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.iamaprettykind.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamaprettykind/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamaprettykind