Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Veronica Hawkins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Veronica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Kind of a long story so I will try to give the short version. It all started from the age of 13 years old. I struggled with dry, oily and painful acne and cystic acne. My hair also grew slowly and would break off due to it being very dry and hard to manage.
For my skin I went through thousands of dollars spent on skin care over the years as well as demonologists trying to get some kind of relief from my dry, acne prone and sensitive skin. This issue followed me well into adulthood.
For my hair I also went through a tons of different products trying to find one that could throughly hydrate my hair and maintain moisture. I found that every product I went through only coated my hair giving me a false hope and was also filled with many different chemicals that I did not want in my body.
Over time I started slowly researching many different natural ingredients and was able to eventually create products that worked. I begun getting many compliments on my skin and hair and being ask what I was using. This eventually lead to the birth of Naturally Born.
Veronica, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
A little about me. Well for starters I am a little shy but I am very passionate when it comes to helping people with any skin or hair ailment they may be dealing with. This is what lead me into this industry as I know first hand what it’s like to deal with sensitive skin and moderate to severe acne and deal with dry unhealthy hair all at once. You lose your self esteem and your confidence is at zero. You avoid meeting new people, try to hide from the world and reject taking pictures with family and friends as you feel like the only thing people see when they look at you is your problematic skin and unhealthy dry and dull hair. I do not want anyone to have to feel this way about themselves. It was a depressing feeling to say the least. I was able to find a solution out using only natural ingredients from the earth and wanted to share it with the world.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I may be the odd ball here with this one. Instead of taking out a business loan I decided to fund my business with savings and with my business profits. One thing I did not want to do is have immediate debt while trying to grow a business. You may have to sacrifice not paying yourself for a while but the beautiful thing about it is that you do not have to worry about the extra stress of paying back a loan on top of everything else you have to tend to while running a business. That whole ordeal is eliminated so you can put your time and energy into focusing on your growth and your business goals.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
I do manufacture my own products. I first sourced out the bottling company I wanted to use to hold my products. I wanted someone I could trust, produced quality products and that did not have any crazy minimums as I was just starting out.
I also design my own labels to go on my products containers as well. I love designing ,creating and constructing things and have been this way since as long I can remember so this was a no-brainer for me.
A few things that I’ve learned is that you would always need a backup company that you can also trust. Either that or backup/alternative containers you wouldn’t mind using as sometimes things happen out of your control (as we all probably learned from Covid years) so you want to always ensure that you are prepared. That way you can still deliver quality and timely service to your customers. Same quality product but just in a temporary package.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.naturallybornhaircare.com
- Instagram: @naturallybornhaircare
- Facebook: Naturally Born LLC