Nigerian entrepreneur makes cake soap in her beauty store

Nigerian entrepreneur Blondie Okpuzor makes what she calls ‘birthday cake soaps’ at her beauty store in Lagos, Nigeria.

She is the founder and chief executive of BathKandy, a cosmetics line that makes food-inspired bath and body products like soaps, scrubs, polishes, scented oils and home fragrances among others.

Blondie’s products are all made by hand and purposed to look and smell like desserts.

“I think people love things that look good. So, I mean we are in Nigeria so there is a lot of people are doing natural products, and I just think generally the population we are moving towards natural things. So, it was a function of how do you stand out and these are the things that I personally like,” she said.

Blondie who studied business management and sociology in the U.S. started her business in 2014, about three years after moving back home.

With an initial investment of about 9,800 U.S. dollars mopped up from her savings and contributions from family members, she took on entrepreneurship.

The beauty and skincare industry has been described as a fast-growing business sector in the country and is highly competitive.

In 2016 the sector was valued at 620 million U.S. dollars according to Euromonitor International, a global market intelligence publisher.

With a population of 170 million people, BathKandy is part of a new wave of start-ups that are finding opportunities to market products in Africa’s most populous country.

“We manufacture everything here, you need power. So if you are running your generator 24 hours that’s a bit of a challenge right? Another issue that we face was employment and staffing I think we are good now, but it took a while for us to a place where we were okay and comfortable with what we had,” Blondie said.

The product website carries the candy theme but BathKandy also markets itself through a sweet in-store experience that has set them apart from other local skin-care companies.

“I got to know about Bathkandy two years ago, through a particular company and I first bought their soaps, their garri scrub soap and it was a very nice experience, it had a very wonderful scent, it was affordable and you know it left my skin not dry it was oily and so and I enjoyed the experience,” said Doyin Balogun, a customer.

Blondie runs stores in Lagos and Abuja and ships products to clients across the country.
The product website carries the candy theme but BathKandy also markets itself through a sweet in-store experience that has set them apart from other local skin-care companies.