An Interview With BYBI Founders Elsie And Dominika

Writer and expert6 years ago

To celebrate our ‘Empowerment’ box, I’ve been interviewing a range of inspiring women this month. I’ve already spoken to Scarlett Curtis and Georgie Coleridge Cole. Today though, I’ll be chatting to BYBI founders, Elsie and Dominika.

Together, these two friends expanded their clean beauty blog into a 100% natural, vegan and cruelty-free beauty brand, developing products that empower people to take control of what they put on their skin.

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Hi Elsie and Dominika. What a pleasure to meet you! Before we discuss the success of BYBI, could you tell me the backstory of how you met and how you came to found Clean Beauty Co together?

We were both working in digital advertising when we met. The wellness movement was gaining momentum in the UK and we were both very much into clean eating, fitness and beauty. We were careful about what we were putting into our bodies, and so we became increasingly aware of what we were putting onto our bodies too. We started paying closer attention to the ingredients in our beauty treatments, and quickly realised they were full of water and fillers and contained few active ingredients.

We started to take control of exactly what went into our beauty products.

That’s when we started to take control of exactly what went into our beauty products. We made our own at home, experimenting with recipes and sharing them on @cleanbeautyinsiders. We then decided to document our journey, sharing our natural beauty recipes, advice and tips. That’s how our online following grew.

Creating and launching your own successful beauty brand is no mean feat. What led you to make the leap from beauty bloggers to BYBI founders?

Creating our clean beauty blog before becoming BYBI founders gave us time to immerse ourselves in the market and really understand where the gaps were.

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After trying lots of natural skincare brands and making our own products, we realised there was a clear gap in the market for a beauty brand that upheld great ethics around sustainability and ingredients, but was also appealing to a mainstream beauty consumer.

How did you know the time was right and that your business could be successful?

When we got our book deal with Penguin, it really felt like a turning point. To have an international publisher validate our ideas made us feel like it was a really good opportunity for us to go full-time on the business.

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You started Clean Beauty Co to ‘empower people to take control of what they put on their skin’. What makes your skincare different and how does it effectively empower people?

Before launching BYBI, most natural beauty products on the market felt niche, alternative and a little old fashioned, and yet the actual products themselves perform really well.

We wanted to make natural products that look great on your bathroom shelf, but also have the ability to transform your skin.

We wanted to make 100% natural, vegan and cruelty-free skincare appealing to a mass market in a way that no other brand was offering: natural products that look great on your bathroom shelf, but also have the ability to transform your skin. BYBI Beauty provides transparency in our ingredients and innovation in our formulations to bring you high performance beauty that works, one hero product at a time.

At GLOSSYBOX, we try to build a community of subscribers that lift each other up. How has your partnership helped you be better business women?

Having a business partner is amazing: someone to share the highs and lows, sense check decisions and basically have someone that is going through exactly the same journey as you. Being a founder can be quite lonely, so we’d definitely advise having a partner.

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Outside of your duo, what’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t wait for perfection.

Since becoming BYBI founders, what has been your most rewarding memory?

Every day brings new challenges, which only seem to grow as the business grows! Our key challenges are often around working in a very large and very old fashioned industry. A lot of what we’re trying to achieve as a business challenges the norms of the rest of the industry so things are difficult, time consuming and often more expensive. It doesn’t stop us though!

A lot of what we’re trying to achieve as a business challenges the norm of the rest of the industry.

Our most rewarding memory was definitely going into the flagship Sephora store on Champs Elysee and seeing our products there.

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As part of our campaign, we’re asking our team and our subscribers what empowerment means to them. What does empowerment mean to you?

We equate empowerment to taking control: we initially took control of our beauty routines and now we’re leading the growing ship that is BYBI.

Empowerment is having the confidence to execute.

Finally, I’ve been chatting to a range of inspiring women this month, including Georgie Coleridge Cole and Scarlett Curtis. Who inspires you?

We look up to strong women like Sharmadean Reid, CEO of Beautystack, and Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier.

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