Written by: Funmike | Edited by: Ez
When you discover African brands pushing to change and drive the narrative around Beauty on the continent, you just gotta shine the spotlight on them. Meet Toyin, with her brand, Junederm, she wants to change the mindset that believes: “Perfect Skin” is the ultimate skincare goal. Rather, they promote getting the skin to a better and healthier state as more important. This is evident in the products they formulate, targeted at yielding realistic results for their customers.
Junederm is fairly new to the beauty scene, but already making a huge impact. Products like their ‘Plumping Hydration Complex Serum’ [pictured below], is now approaching holy-grail cult status.
Like we mentioned in our previous article, in this series we will be asking each Founder a couple questions centred around the unique challenges the encounter whilst building their beauty brand in Nigeria. Let’s get into it…
Q: As a beauty (skincare) brand, what challenges have you faced running a business in Nigeria?
Toyin: “My brand, Junederm, is still very new. It’s just a few months old, so I do not think I am qualified to answer this question in detail as I have not really faced many challenges yet. However, I know they are coming. One issue I will say I have faced is that Nigerian skincare ingredient suppliers do not have enough variety of ingredients to select from. So I have to source most of our ingredients from overseas suppliers and shipping costs are very expensive.”
Q: Why is Packaging important to your brand?
Toyin: “Providing good quality packaging is not a difficult thing to do, so it disappoints me when I see the majority of Nigerian brands releasing products and not putting enough thought into their packaging. Good quality packaging may be slightly or much more expensive, but it definitely makes your brand more appealing to potential customers and puts you on the radar of skincare professionals.
Getting noticed just by your packaging alone is really important because there are people out there that like pretty things and buy things just because they look pretty. It’s important to catch your potential customer’s attention first with your packaging and spark an interest with that before you go into detail about the benefits of the product ”
We echo her sentiments! A lot of thought should go into packaging, because it creates significant disparities between brands, either local or foreign and it’s a major factor in every consumer’s decision-making process.
Q: Is knowledge of skincare an important criteria in the selection of influencers?
T: “We do work with influencers. We have gifted a lot of skincare content creators our products and have had a paid partnership with one that actually boosted our sales. Knowledge of skincare is very important when picking a skincare influencer to work with or send a PR package. Just making content is not enough. Those that show a superior level of skincare knowledge have loyal followers that trust their skincare product recommendations and actually buy what they recommend“
As an aside, Consumers do your research! We’re quick to identify Ponzi schemes because money is involved but your skin is tied to your health, put the same energy into researching products.
Q: Should more work be done on the regulation of the beauty industry?
T: “Yes I do think there needs to be better regulation—to stop brands from using harmful ingredients. The ingredients in bleaching creams/lotions are so dangerous for the skin, I am surprised they are able to be sold in Nigeria. Cosmetics aren’t drugs or food, so that could be one of the reasons why its regulation is not taken as seriously.”
The government has a major role to play in regulation, is NAFDAC enough to regulate these products, or do we need more industry-tailored regulatory bodies?
To shop: www.junederm.com
Instagram: @JunedermSkin
Interesting to hear a Founder’s perspective on the unique challenges faced by beauty entrepreneurs in Nigeria, and also the things that truly matter to them.
Read the next Founder Feature: A.BEAUTY FOUNDER SERIES: SANCT SKIN
