At Butter & Grace® we help build confidence in people by taking care of their skin and promoting self-care through manufacturing and selling natural skincare and home fragrance products. We sell our products online and in a few stores. We deliver nationwide. We champion 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
What is your biggest success?
Having grown from just one product to over 20, all manufactured locally with the formulas created by myself is success (insert single tear here). Reaching Top 10 at the Standard Bank and Giving Wings Pitch Competition and receiving a grant funding of R60k. Besides this R60k, my mom gave me R5000 to start the business, which I used for research and to produce the first product - a whipped body butter which nourishes and heals dry skin. Every money that came in after that went into more research, testing ingredients and buying equipment. Writing my first business article and being published on Top Women in October 2024. By grace, I received a bursary to further my studies and passing my BCOM Honours Marketing Management Degree! My goodness! Trademarking Butter & Grace® with the CIPC.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
My biggest hurdle so far was financial - being able to have enough money to test our products and also for marketing purposes. Although our products looked professional, with a strong brand presence, Product testing became a barrier to entering some markets. We therefore decided to first test our best sellers while finding ways to test the remaining ones. A small budget in the digital marketing space reduces good results, we are still working on this. Finding the right suppliers with reasonable costs and whose ingredients are tested was tough, but through many months of research, we managed to find reliable partners who share the same values that we do.
