 at organic lip care. Alright so everyone's lips are different and it's from that difference between all authentic looking gorgeous but we can enhance on how we look by actually taking care of our different lips because that's outstanding. I think that's one thing that you notice when you meet someone and they smile at you be like that smile back. The studio I'm joined with Steven Juguna who is the CEO of Blastair Beauty Lip Care. Thank you very much Misha. Yes you did, shaking quite a trite. Welcome so tell us more about Blastair Beauty Lip Care that is. So Blastair Beauty is an organic lip care line based in Nairobi Kenya. So basically we make organic lip care that is lip balms and lip glosses. All of them from organic compounds that is lip loving oils and beeswax and also inclusive of like even the mica that we use. Everything is sourced both locally and internationally but it's 100% natural and organic. Yes yes so basically it's just healthy lip care. Before we go into details of what you do, because give us a little bit of a background of who Steven is, your educational background, did you study? I'm a 23 year old entrepreneur. I started my lip care line sometime in 2018. Back then I was in college so I was very broke. I only had 300 above in my pocket and then I had visited a friend in Nyeri a while back. So when I got here I rushed to Du Bois. I got a few lipsticks. One has been for 50 shillings. I went back to school. I was in KMTC back then. I was studying of course in orthopedics and trauma medicine and so I started a small cosmetic business in school which later with time back to this. I learnt the formula of making this from YouTube. So something so small has become something very very important and very sentimental in my life. But apart from this I also run a small smoky joint. So I basically sell eggs and smokies around home. So I'm a net of renewed heart. Though school wise I just graduated recently. I have a diploma in orthopedic and trauma medicine. So start to do it. Bone care and emergency medicine. Interesting. Wow at your age and it's just it's amazing how you are in a position to just understand that you need to make an extra coin. Just you know juggle a little bit of everything and there just to make ends meet. So talk to me about what is the passion of beauty come from? I think it comes from my mom runs a salon around home. So I think growing up I've seen her basically touch people up and make them look good and feel good and be confident and I'm one person is always like there you know I'm always I've always been this kid who I would work in a room and look at people and be like I like her because she looks like this. I don't like her makeup. So I think it came from that. I never really understood it until a particular point. I'm with my friends in town and we get in a very big cosmetic store along my avenue and I get down like you know what guys someday I want to run such kind of a business and but I think lip care is basically beauty is it's a multi-billion business industry and luckily it's something that has not been embraced fully by creators and other renewals and that's I think that I want to change in future. So when you're that friend when you get into a store you're just simply looking for probably a nude lipstick. You were just thinking about how they manufacture the whole thing. Yeah yeah yeah so my approach to cosmetic is mostly product-based not really service-based. Talk to me about funding your business. Back in 2018 you have 300 bop you went to a store to buy lipstick got a couple of mixtape and here you are manufacturing your own. So talk to me about the initial early stages of your business. You're working from home right? Yes yes yes yes I basically make them in my kitchen. Perfecto. Yeah I'm always making them in my kitchen. So talk to me about your initial investment and funding of the business. So what happened was at around 2019 December I happened to attend an entrepreneurship dinner that was being hosted in Nairobi Baptist and so there was this lady who was a speaker and after the whole session I went to her and I told her I introduced myself to her and I told her that I wanted to start a cosmetic business. Who are you introducing yourself to right now? She was a lady she was giving she was actually the host. Yes yes she was the host speaker and so I talked to her about about my business and and then we were like cool great we exchanged contacts and then sometime in January of 2020 she gives me a call and she's like I'm very interested in your proposal and so we met we talked we had the details right I had a few small coins in my savings account and then she topped out the rest and yeah that is how basically we started in March of 2020 yeah. All right okay it's one thing to just come to your page yeah which by the way it's uh organic lip care solutions. No like your social media handle. Yeah okay people like that. Yeah organic lip care solutions yes. So you know it's one thing to come to you and just say that I want to you know get a lip gloss or anything but I wouldn't think from the aspect of what you go to to just make this. So briefly take us through that in terms of manufacturing what sort of ingredients do you use how long does it take for you to make because they're different uh is it do you say flavor? Yes yes they are different flavors. Yes. You go into details as well so briefly yeah take us through the manufacturing aspect what sort of ingredients do I use how long does it take to even make uh let's say please don't let me the candy one. Yeah um so first of all by the I learnt the whole procedure to make the bombs from YouTube I watched a video on YouTube and it made so much sense. So basically we use um we use we use beeswax we use um there is shea butter there is coconut oil there is castor oil there is vitamin E oil. So basically we take organic oils that are very lip loving and very friendly to the skin of the lips all of them with different compounds an example of an ingredient like coconut oil it's a very good natural skin bleacher okay lighten us so in case like you're suffering from darkened lips and you use our products so our product is going to with time restore your lips back to their very natural state. Time wise it takes around one hour between 45 minutes and one hour to make a specific batch that is a specific flavor yes yes because there is also the process of cleaning and you also have to make them through a heated water bath so it's quite it's not like quite a tedious process but a very simple one around between 45 to an hour I'm always done with a batch that is perhaps a certain flavor okay for guys who have uh we are people who have who have issue with dry lips yeah and then you have guys who have issues with cracked lips I don't is it the same thing it's not they are mostly the same thing mostly that they are caused by different uh okay okay so what would you advise for people who have that particular uh issue um so what you have done with our product is I'll give you an example of our bums we have two bums here we have this one this is a herbal lip balm so this is a very good balm for anybody who suffers from extremely dry lips one of the reasons it's good is because we have double the waxes and the oils so what beeswax does is beeswax will lock in moisture in your skin so you're not going to lose a lot of water remember dry lips will be caused by factors like dehydration okay or the weather perhaps it's extremely sunny or therefore who keep licking their lips because they're just generally dry so this one has double the waxes so um it's going to help lock in moisture and restore your lips so you won't have like extremely dry lips but they'll be very moisturized and then now we have our other bums so I'm sorry okay so these ones are for people who have very okay lips but they want to make sure that their lips stay healthy and moisturized and well taken care of yes yes yeah uh take us to a couple of tips that you can give us to just ensure that we have healthy looking lips have the looking lips um one of them is um hydrate always always always always always always hydrate and two is um an example like for ladies because they are always using lipstick right um so get a product like our balm is a very good lipstick base okay so just apply it beneath your lipstick put your lipstick on yeah so close you have already protected your lips but don't really especially for cosmetic we don't unfortunately there is a lot of counterfeit out there so before you apply the product directly on your lips use a very good quality product to protect it so our balm is very good as that outer protection for your lips okay and then so in the evening also I realized you know you'll just remove your lipstick and then just apply Vaseline and your sleep um so you can also use it to just for nightcare after care on your lips okay so in the meantime your lips will be very sustained um even for people who smoke because smoking also cause darkened lips just use a lip balm after smoking and then we have people who actually have dark lips and yet they don't smoke yeah um probably uh it developed uh with time due to lipstick that one has used prior yeah as you've mentioned a counterfeit of the original product of course how do you deal with that to just retain back to the normal color um so um like as I've said our products have an example of coconut well that's not product so consistent use of the product is going to up also with like dark lips they are also caused by extreme weather that is extreme humidity that is hotness or the weather can be very cold so always make sure that your lips are just well sustained and and just covered don't go with them out there can do the style yeah all right let's go to uh brand visibility yeah and positioning uh what a couple of things that you've put together to just ensure that your name is out there in the market space yeah um that take us through your branding strategy as well um um when we started um I had I had the intention of you know going full makeup full skincare full hair and so one of the one of the things that I've done for brand visibility is just niche marketing and it's just lip care lip care only only lip care and then also introducing and introducing products that are just fun and and very very engaging also we have had a very great group of people especially makeup artists who have taken our product used it reviewed it and talked to their clients about it there's also paid partnerships by google ads and things of that sort so but mostly time time is quite a big factor when it comes to visibility because it takes time for especially for the Kenyan market it's a very very peculiar peculiar market it takes time for people to trust you and your work so as long as you're like very very consistent and there is always some kind of improvement I usually call myself a creator of my products and my work because this is something that keeps growing so constant improvement and less on speed in advertising or how you present your work like when you started you only had one flavor we never had glosses or other flavors of yes you only had one and it was packaged in other tubes so consistent working and just evolving your work people when people see effort they just appreciate it yeah and you've mentioned something which is very true that it's very hard to break into the market space and the competition is very high what keeps you consistent and what's the brand vision what keeps me consistent is the people that buy from me I have had the privilege of getting some of the best testimonials ever and so when someone texts me in the morning or after you buy my product and they're like hi Steve I bought your product so far so good I've seen my lips improve I'm going to definitely recommend this to my friend and the friend calls and they're like that seriously keeps me going I've had the best clientele in the whole world I have honestly had an opportunity of experiencing that the brand vision yes we intend to become I hope people mark this because I want them to and I'm taking back again I want them to mark this but our vision is to produce quality original affordable cosmetics and so our big dream is to become one of the biggest actually manufacturers and distributors of cosmetics quality affordable original cosmetics in eastern central Africa yes yes probably in the next 10 or 15 years I mean I said we know like we've gone on with this conversation back and forth and I've just realized I didn't ask or I'm just curious that now why did you choose to go Ghaniq because of one thing we my it's I told you that I used to buy lipstick from Du Bois and go and sell to my mom so on this particular day my mom bought lipstick it was it had anesthesia still I was there and I was like oh my god you know I just saw my mom lipstick for 100 but that's not the ideal anesthesia still it's not right it's something that she's even putting very close to her mouth it's something that she's consuming and so the aspect of the the idea came from me wanting to produce a product that was very wholesome because my idea of doing work and business is doing work that is just you know that work that does not really I don't really have to step on people or harm people so that I can make money my the idea of organic lip care is just having a product that is whole a product that is safe for myself I use my product because it's safe for myself and it's safe for my little brother and it's safe for my mother so the the idea is just having a product that is just safe for human consumption a product that does the job that's supposed to do but it's also not really having very sad negative consequences all right let's look at your retail strategy do you work with retailers or do you sell the products directed to your customers at the moment we're just selling directly to our customers but we are we are looking forward to retailing our products in our own shops starting in January of 2023 yes yes yes and who are you like literally like your target market my target market are mostly women and and and men people as long as these people who are passionate about organic beauty and wholesome living whether men or women as long as someone is interested in wholesome living and organic beauty those are our target market looking back from 2018 and just you know bringing this baby to to life what are a couple of lessons that you've learned along the way my greatest lesson has been consistency and discipline it pays it honestly pays when i started i didn't know stuff i only knew how to make one flavor of lip arms i didn't know the kind of mic i didn't even know like things like makeup that is the coloring that we use our products is is usually available with something that you use and and for some reason seeing myself grow as a person and seeing my work grow has been like one of those very big highlights another lesson has been um i'm sure there are a couple yeah yeah there are so many uh but all the most important ones has been just the power of just being very disciplined and being very consistent it pays all right it pays i've ever been in a position whereby you have products yeah and you feel like these are the best products why kenya is not buying these products have you ever been a positional by there are no sales and um what made you keep going um uh it actually struck a few months you see i started in march of 2020 and then at around april may corona hits and so i live in kiambu so i usually get most sales to Nairobi so basically there's a lockdown and i have merchandise that was worth a lot of money close to six thousand shillings lying around in the house and so by the time the lockdown was being lifted most of my product had gone bad you know i was i was watching myself throw them away i'm like god how do i have to go through this but basically what has seen me through is is the dream is the dream is the dream it's right here it's the dream it just keeps me going not the money not the people but just the dream and i've always lived with the idea of if i make a product and people don't like it or if it doesn't sell as long as i have put my work there that is always enough yeah the the opportunity to just work and produce something that is mine is usually just very much enough yeah let's look at uh let's address the legalities uh in in your line of business i'm sure there's aspect of licensing and building clientele aspect of credibility of course how do you deal with that and are you guys licensed uh not yet i'm working on registration and staff of that sort we're already consulting lawyers yeah but it's organic so yeah it's very organic uh but mostly the credibility aspect of it comes from um how can i put it um i think god has been very very gracious and and very very kind to us and we have come across people who are very very trusting but also and the results from client yes we have if you look at our social media just you see like we have a lot of testimonials and these are real life scenes from people um these are so the other the other aspects of um like we have just had people just love our work and and also we film and we show people how we make our work all of it yes yes we have it on youtube so we also have those issues out there so there's a lot of transparency on how we do our work yeah even in the aspect of manufacturing of course okay so has steven was there a business plan did you have a business plan did she say that this is what i'm going to do this is the amount of finances that i'm going to set aside this is the retail strategy was there like a business plan yeah yeah yeah um one person who believes in creating systems um and so much of my time has been spent on reading books and doing research and writing down goals and ticking what has been done reviewing what has been done what works and what really doesn't and it comes across you know when you're now running a small business on your own you become everything and so it comes across all platform from the finances to marketing to legal and everything of that sort but yes we do have it all right how important is it for someone who wants to start a business to have a like a drawing board of how they want things to run yeah and i'll ask the second question right after this it's like um you see it's one being like assuming we are lighted at around archives this morning and for me my goal was to come to y254 so i know the route to y254 and then the other person we are two of us and you you're just there and call like so see june in the u n um i'm in the horror park i'm in the mombasa road you see um focus is very important um because so with that written plan you already know how you're where you are going where you want to go so we focus exactly it keeps you very it gives you a sense of of direction and then that way you can also be able to review yourself and what is working and what is going on yes yes for one person who wants to get into the beauty entrepreneur uh beauty the beauty entrepreneurship space um what would be your advice when it comes to just the let's look at the earlier stages of just starting off what would be your advice to that particular person intention intention um this is an industry that has been flooded with so many counterfeit poor products i think you have seen it on the internet someone went board suji foundation you know skin cream applied it the skin has changed damaged forever um you know uh i once saw a feature on tv years back when i was in high school i was saying that people are consuming lipstick that has led in it it's led it's a very dangerous mineral and so on would be just be very intentional with your work you know um the point of doing business and when god gives you a chance and god entrusts you with something like this make sure that you're just making honest work it's all about the money also the imposition about honest work and i'm one person who believes that there are people in this republic and in our society who have made an honest living and god is capable of blessing so don't seriously just use shortcuts or things of that sort just make an honest living just have honest work okay yeah if you can't seriously use your product if you then if you can't trust your product with your family or someone very dear to you then don't sell it to anybody else absolutely yeah be very intentional okay and uh as you wind up what a couple financial lessons that you have learned along this from from your business from my business oh save god save save save save save um spare some time some linear of money just save for a rainy day another one is don't hold money no no no no no no you know um just invest it back to your business okay you make 10 000 in sales save a thousand or two thousand take eight thousand back do better do better do better but don't seriously hold money just do better and also do not mix your financial money with your personal finances always pay yourself also yeah always pay i pay myself with commission or product so always pay yourself and be disciplined very very disciplined very very disciplined especially because this is you like no one is watching nobody's watching you um so be very very disciplined yeah couple of challenges that you faced along the way uh understanding the market locally um that has been one very understanding how i'm still figuring it out because um the Kenyan market is just very different it's very different it's very different you can set up a website because you have read an american book that is telling you to set up a website and do stuff but here um yes people know of websites and how they work but they barely do actually visit the actual website it's in shop another challenge has been before we move to the another challenge sorry for cutting a shot you feel like for because you mentioned something important like when you talk about website website website and if you do research they always tell you start up a website and go all in but most Kenyans are not always you know clicking on that website they're the most on social media they're on facebook they're on instagram they're on twitter yeah so do you feel like the alternatives is way better and people should focus on that especially during the early stages of your business yeah i feel like websites would work for certain businesses they would also not work for other businesses and so depending on whichever field you are in maybe for a tech company a website would be very important it's so very important for polycast to have a website but you also have to find different ways where you can just source people and stuff like for us we make most of our money from social media yeah especially instagram yeah um you see that is different from and i don't have you know an actual website yet yeah i feel also like your clientele your target market also sit the pace of where it should be yeah over you should be at of where you should be at because if i tell your business is so you have to know how various social media platforms and and the internet generally works you know who is and there are books about it who does how does facebook work how does instagram work how does twitter work and then once you look at all those how does snapchat work because a business for making a killing on snapchat and tick tock so how do they work and then after you've realized how do they they work then you choose one or two and you just position yourself yeah yeah and you're going to make money from it right yes uh so for people who want to keep the conversation going the guys who want to order in uh for me i got mine mine was candy yes it was it looks nude though yeah yeah it's a very nice bomb so thank you very much Stephen for this yeah and uh guys i'll give you a review on tuesday she definitely will and most most definitely how can people reach out to you and keep the conversation going make their orders um uh visit us on social media instagram at organic lip care solution just organic lip care solution on instagram blaster beauty on facebook and you can whatsapp us on zero seven nine six six twenty six twenty five repeat that again zero seven nine six six twenty six twenty five that's our whatsapp number oh i thank you very much Stephen juguna thank you very much for having us michelle yes so looking forward to uh you know applying this it's called it's called candy uh it's a moisturizing lip balm so you guys i'll give you a review next tuesday all right so thank you very much Stephen for coming through and talking about matters pertaining uh the beauty entrepreneurship uh space and matters pertaining uh the organic lip care thank you all right guys best way to pay for all right very much for this opportunity thank you as well guys keep it right here on why two five four channel it'll be right back with so oh it was about so you'll be right back with so much more but i doubt that because of our time but we'll be right back with ram to sample a couple of your comments on our social media hand of that is at y2f4 channel at michelle ashira is where you can find me across all my social and namaguca we'll be right back