Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in skincare but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Marquita Robinson Garcia, Owner of DVINITI Skin Care, located in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
At DVINITI, we encourage our community to trust nature’s recipe for feeling and looking our best. We guide each client by identifying and creating unique skin care blends, teaching them how to choose quality ingredients and gain the confidence to manage their skin care needs over time.
We started by servicing a few close family and friends, but as more learned about the gratifying experience, demand for our services increased. Before long, we had developed a method for working with new clients and helping them discover their best skin ever! DVINITI skin care products are designed for all skin types to help promote skin health and overall wellness.
Beginning my own skincare company materialized my vision. DVINITI’s mission is our specialization: INFORM-EMPOWER-CREATE! It’s based on the philosophy of educating and promoting self-awareness to develop proper self-care practices. We provide plant-based, carefully crafted skincare for an individual’s unique skin chemistry. The DNA of DVINITI as a brand is spiritual. True beauty isn’t a one-dimensional, superficial, physical state. It can neither be boxed nor contained.
Tell us about yourself
One of my most rewarding services is creating solutions for people who have been let down by traditional personal care products but can’t find a better option. Having worked extensively with synthetic and natural ingredients, I have learned that the best skin care is derived from the earth’s simple resources.
With over ten years of corporate industry experience, transitioning from experimenting in the lab to leading business development, I’ve seen just about every ingredient on the market. Through it all, I can confidently say natural products deliver equally effective, if not superior, results when compared to traditional retail personal care products. To offer this to the mainstream, the industry is shifting to fall in step with the changing marketplace. Brands are slowly investing more resources to develop natural, plant-based, holistic personal care and cosmetic options.
Functioning behind the scenes, I worked for material suppliers providing the ingredients to manufacturers that create retail beauty products. I gained insight, strategically planned with global beauty brands, and in part, influenced the direction of mass-marketed products bound to reach households all over the world. I experienced the good, bad, and, ironically, the ugly side of the industry first-hand. It provided me with incredible knowledge about personal care and cosmetics. Yet, I was disappointed in the products (which overuse complex, synthetic chemicals) and marketing messages (which promote impracticable beauty ideals to influence purchases). It seemed toxic to the body, mind, and spirit.
I felt out of touch with the people and families who rely on the industry for their hygiene and self-care needs. From my tenure as a personal care chemical formulator, I could personally attest to the excitement of creating beauty products. I yearned to share my experience with others to teach simple ways of customizing products for individual preferences. Personal care should be just that—personal! Care and attention were missing from the equation. I wanted to find a way to offer specialized products to clients and help identify solutions that work for them.
Mainstream beauty campaigns promote sales by triggering feelings of self-doubt, instigating comparisons, and exploiting physical insecurities. The traditional theatrics and fanciful fairy tales that influence young adults’ perspectives of beauty leave out the importance of self-love. Mainstream outlets "safely" depict beauty with bland, monotonous representations that don’t reflect society's variety of colors, curves, and charm. I wanted a way to express beauty on my own terms and gained the courage to let go of mainstream definitions of beauty.
Don’t get me wrong; I loved my line of work. The roles I served allowed me to move and sway with the industry at a high level. But after experiencing personal care from the perspective of a standardized, mechanical machine, I learned true beauty needs space to flow. I decided it was time to experience the artistry of beauty in the exchange of ideas. In doing so, I discovered the source of my beauty emerges naturally from within. This acknowledgment freed me and let my divinity out of the box.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
My biggest accomplishment as a business owner so far has been completing and self-publishing the first edition of my book series, The Sustainable Beauty, a product and self-care guide. Now available in paperback and ebook format (Amazon and Book Baby Store), I am excited and proud to share the guide that will help consumers navigate retail beauty and cosmetics products to find and use healthy skin care options.
Synthetic chemicals have been introduced into every consumer industry and our lives. Some personal care chemicals get around disclosure requirements, leading consumers to blindly assume they are safe. What’s even more misleading is that although plant-based products are marketed as the "alternatives" to their chemical counterparts, it is synthetic chemicals that are made to mimic the properties of resources found in nature. This rhetoric lends to the stigma that natural ingredients are inferior and unorthodox, fostering skepticism and doubt about their effectiveness.
The Sustainable Beauty unveils realities surrounding natural products to dismantle and deconstruct the current narrative that they don’t stand up to synthetic products in cosmetics and personal care.
To spread this ideology, not only do I execute this process through DVINITI Skin Care, I continue to invest time as a mentor and advisor to students and entrepreneurs aspiring to begin their careers. Sharing my insights and coaching them serves as an incubator to convert their ideas into reality. The traditional beauty industry is saturated and competitive, as companies promote evermore complex formulas and exotic ingredients with vague marketing messages. We will cover ways you can use natural oils and butters with ingredients you can easily understand to experience the luxury of a spa treatment in the comfort of your home. By teaching how to simplify skin care with natural, custom offerings, we expand our mission to be part of the solution to create personalized products, restoring the virtuous expression of beauty for all to enjoy.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
One of the most challenging things about being a business owner is learning to delegate tasks, hold others accountable and trust the job will get done. It is important to be sure I use my emotions and passion for my business constructively to press forward and grow the business. On the flip side, as a business owner, I have had to set aside my attachment to my business in order to scale and grow the business to reach more people.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Visualize your outcome and focus the energy on getting the concept of your business in papers.
- Diversify the stream of income and invest a portion of revenue in order to create passive income for your business.
- Network and meet new people that will want to support your growth and encourage your dream.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Get a copy of my book here, and save 25% with store code: LOVEYOURSKIN.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://dviniti.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dvinitiskincare
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dvinitiskincare/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dvinitiskincare
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marquitarobinson/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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