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A few years ago, Nigerian husband and wife Shola and Funlayo Alabi (who are from Nigeria but currently based in Maryland) noticed that their children were suffering from severely dry skin.
"Everything we were buying from the store for so much money wasn't working," says mom Funlayo.
She asked her mother, who still lives in Nigeria, to bring back some shea butter from the markets to see if it worked. Lo and behold, their kids' dry patches cleared up.
"The line grew out of our need for skincare that really worked," says Funlayo. "We started adding humectant to it, and before you know it, we were handing it out to friends and family and getting awesome feedback."
And so Shea Radiance was born. But the Alabis didn't want to exploit female workers in West Africa, so they decided to deal with the women directly instead of going through middle men.
"If I paid a thousand dollars for a thousand pounds of shea butter, it was likely the women were only getting 250 dollars for it," she says.
They identified a group of women they wanted to work with, and made sure the money went straight to their own pockets.
"We also did work with the West Africa Shea Butter Hub," says Funlayo. "We took technical trainers back to the coop [so they could train the women] to make the best product ever."
Since starting in 2007, Shea Radiance has grown to include body creams, scrubs, balms and soaps in all sorts of yummy flavors. What began as a little mom-and-pop shop is now growing into a major, real-deal operation. The Alabis' plan is to establish shea butter production stations all over Nigeria. Plus, they want to reinvest 10 percent of profits back into the community to help lift up the standard of living for women and children.
"As a businesswoman, it's very satisfying to be able to go back to Nigeria and Ghana and see women working in a rural environment profiting from these opportunities," says Funlayo.
