Meet the Maker – Jamyla of Oyin Handmade

Chloe Tate

This week in our ongoing Meet the Maker series, we’re thrilled to introduce you to Jamyla of Oyin Handmade.

 

Jamyla of Oyin Handmade
Jamyla of Oyin Handmade

 

LBC: What inspired you to take the leap as an entrepreneur? 
Jamyla:  I was initially inspired to the field by personal need — I was looking for a product that didn’t as yet exist in the marketplace and decided to try making it. Once I did, I wanted to share it – seeing the response made me realize there was demand, and my husband, Pierre, encouraged me to make it publicly available.

 

LBC: How would you describe what you create?
Jamyla:  We create high quality hair and body products to bring a sense of joy and luxury to the everyday acts of self-care. They are made with honey, food-quality oils and naturally sourced ingredients; they are made with love.

 

LBC: Where can we find your products?
Jamyla:  At our website (Oyinhandmade.com) as well as Curlmart.com and Amazon.com. They are also available at select Whole Foods markets in the mid-atlantic region, at awesome independent retailers nationwide, and have JUST launched at select Target stores nationwide in spring 2014.

 

AfterBath oil by Oyin Handmade.
AfterBath oil by Oyin Handmade.

 

LBC: Walk us through a typical work day.
Jamyla:  The production kitchen and shipping areas are on the way to my office, so I get to check in briefly with everyone and have a quick chat with our department heads before sitting down for the day. Each day we have a midmorning meeting where each of our team members shares their goals for the day and asks for any necessary support. It’s a great way for everyone to keep track of what’s going on and make sure they are supporting each other effectively. Most days I focus on capacity building – finding a new machine, a new system, a software improvement, a new supplier, scaling up a recipe, interacting with our distributors or suppliers, or raising awareness about our brand through outreach, media or social media interaction, creation of training or outreach materials and strategic partnerships.

 

LBC: What are 3 things makers should think through when they initially decide to start a business?
Jamyla:  1. Figure out why you are doing this. Entrepreneurship asks a lot of you and you don’t want to lose sight of your true goals while in the midst of the daily grind.
2. Try to create systems early on, so that delegation and scaling become easier. You can’t have someone else help you do it if it’s all in your head!
3. Don’t be a terrible boss to yourself. We entrepreneurs tend to ask things of ourselves we would never ask of an employee — 24/7 availability, brutal hours. Try to keep in mind that although we would do anything for our business, we won’t be able to do anything at all if we burn ourselves out.

 

Nourishing "Sugar" Pomades by Oyin Handmade.
Nourishing “Sugar” Pomades by Oyin Handmade.

 

LBC: When you’re overwhelmed, what brings you back to focus?
Jamyla:  Spending time with my family. My husband has a way of putting everything into perspective, and always reminds me to take time for myself to recharge, even when I forget. Our kiddos are awesome … and their needs are so immediate and urgent, even when they are ridiculous, (like having the right color spoon with their yogurt or something, lol) … it can offer a nice lesson in perspective. And, their little-kid nuttiness is always good for a laugh.

 

LBC: Tell us about a few of the best business decisions you’ve made to date?
Jamyla:  The first: building a website. I knew html at a time not everyone did, and the first site was very web 1.0 … but it existed. There is something extremely powerful about just STARTING. Putting it out there, having the audacity to offer the idea to the world, that is the beginning of everything. After that, offering sample sizes was a huge push forward for our business. At the time we were online-only; and the sample packs enabled people to try multiple products w/a relatively minor outlay, and it made them feel more comfortable purchasing these products online. Then, they would fall in love and the rest was history. 🙂 And, finally … opening our boutique in 2009 was amazing because for the first time we got to meet and interact with the people who had been using our products, and it was so wonderful to connect!

 

Honey, this looks divine! Psst … Oyin is the Yoruba word for honey.
Honey, this looks divine! Psst … Oyin is the Yoruba word for honey.

 

LBC: Please share one mistake or obstacle from your business experience. How did you bounce back/overcome it?
Jamyla:  I did NOT accurately anticipate the impact of the arrival of my firstborn child on my business, and my ability to work. At the time, the biz was still overwhelmingly staffed with just myself & Pierre and when our baby arrived just a week ahead of schedule, we were still completing our move from our house to our 1st warehouse and were still training our maternity-leave swing staff, sigh. We experienced delays in shipping, which embarrass me to this day, and bounced back with just COPIOUS apologies and coupon codes and explanations. We felt terrible, but it reiterated the fact that we really needed to focus on delegation and scalability. We knew even then that we could not perpetually do it all ourselves, especially as our lives and family obligations were changing. Luckily, most of our customers were wonderfully understanding and seemed to appreciate the transparency in communication as well as the savings we offered.

 

LBC: Is there a cause or organization that you contribute to that you’re particularly passionate about?
Jamyla:  I feel passionate about supporting girls in STEM fields, about supporting young people of color in seeking higher education and info about entrepreneurship, about keeping in step with the development of Baltimore, about nutrition access and food deserts, about health and education access in inner cities, about employment training among young people, about creating affirming and edifying messages of self-love and self-care within the beauty industry, about fair trade w/communities whose amazing natural resources (shea butter, argan oil, etc) are helping fuel this beauty revolution we all enjoy.

 

Oyin Sample Packs are a great way to become acquainted with their products!
Oyin Sample Packs are a great way to become acquainted with their products!

 

LBC: What are 3 essential resources in your business toolbox you can’t do without?
Jamyla: Evernote pro. Cloud computing. My iPhone. (see a theme here? Gadget head).

 

LBC: Suppose we had a time machine. If we blasted ourselves forward a few years, where would we see your company?
Jamyla:  We would like to branch out into other facets of the ‘honey life’ – home goods, skincare, etc. Additionally, Pierre and I are slowly re-focusing on the cultural/artistic aspect of our work — films, art, books, etc. We both believe that art and culture are potentially quite transformative, in that they help form the parameters within which people imagine themselves. I want to see the boundaries of our collective imagination expand!

 

Love the packaging + brand personality of Oyin Handmade.
Love the packaging + brand personality of Oyin Handmade.

 

If you could hire someone to do just one thing that you sort of loath doing, what would it be?
Jamyla:  Folding the laundry. We have no trouble actually laundering the laundry … but why is the folding next to impossible?

 

Tell me about a few of the places on your travel “bucket list.”
Jamyla:  Pierre and I have a cross-country rented-RV trip on our bucket list with the boys when they are old enough to appreciate and remember. We want them to get a sense of the scale and scope of this country of ours, the variety of topography and geography and history within our nation, the variety of people and ways of living. Additionally, I would like to visit Brazil with our family, as well as Angola and Senegal, both locations where we have had a single strand of our ancestry traced through the DNA services of africanancestry.com — and of course, while we’re in the neighborhood we would also love to visit as many of the West African shea butter producing nations as we can, such as Nigeria, Togo and Ghana.

 

What’s the one thing you would eat, if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life?
Jamyla: Nachos. Depending on how you load them, they can provide lots of variety and all the food groups; also they are fun.

 

What a fun + fabulous brand (love these t-shirts). Keep up with Oyin Handmade + Jamyla and her team at Oyinhandmade.com
What a fun + fabulous brand (love these t-shirts). Keep up with Oyin Handmade + Jamyla and her team at Oyinhandmade.com

 

Connect with Jamyla + Oyin Handmade all around the web:

Company Website
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram

 

Thank you, Jamyla, for sharing your fabulous talent + products with us. We look forward to all the big things coming from Oyin Handmade.

 

Want to see your brand featured in our continuing “Meet the Maker Monday” series? Drop us a line: hello@luckybreakconsulting.com. Please use “MEET THE MAKER” as the subject line and be certain to include your web address. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

About the Author

Chloe Tate

Once described as “relentlessly cheerful,” Chloe is a lover of all things colorful and practically every fruit known to man. She lives in Atlanta and divides her time between supporting Lucky Break clients, keeping shop at a local artisan market, and event planning for business conferences. She’s also working on the launch of her skincare line while finishing her degree in Organizational & Leadership Studies. True story: Chloe shares 50% of Lela’s DNA and is poised to inherit her obscenely large shoe collection.

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