Featuring : Interview with the Founder of Beau Bakers beauty brand.
We had an interview with Dominique Fadeni Founder of Beau Bakers beauty brand. Here’s all you need to know about the beauty brand, her journey has a black woman. So sit back and enjoy
Afroconomy: Welcome Dominique, can you tell us a little bit about Beau Bakers …
Dominique: Beau Bakers is a black female-owned, independent beauty brand specialising in inclusive beauty, cruelty-free, colour cosmetics founded in May 2019.
As a beauty brand, we believe representation matters and our mission is to reimagine outdated beauty standards which have typically overlooked women of colour. We believe that beauty is for all and we reflect this belief in the products we create and essentially everything we do.
We believe that everybody should be reflected in High Street Beauty and aim to trailblaze true inclusive beauty in this space so that everyone can access beauty made for them.
Afroconomy: So what was it about cosmetics, that made you want to develop a business in this industry?
Dominique: I first fell in love with Makeup in my late teens and I remember my first experience of experimenting with makeup as a young black woman. It felt like just that … an experiment. Drugstore cosmetics were never the right shade for my complexion, and I would mix shades of foundation to botch together coverage that was closer to my skin tone.
I would look for beauty inspiration in the media but scarcely would I see women of colour represented. Large corporations simply negated making colour cosmetics past the hue of ‘sand’ and whilst truly in my heart believing that beauty is for everyone, these experiences and that of my peers ignited an inner desire, a rebellion if you like of being set on challenging the dogma, restrictions and exclusion of outdated beauty standards.
Afroconomy: A lot of women of colour can relate to that, as an entrepreneur what are you most passionate about?
Dominique: I am passionate about representation and equality. For me, Black women have been long overlooked in the Beauty industry and truth Colourism has dominated the beauty industry for long enough.
Beauty is for everyone and people of colour should be represented equally in beauty brands and the products they produce. People of colour should not have to pay a premium to find a product that suits them nor go to specialist stores to find a range that caters for all. At least this is what I thought to myself when I founded Beau Bakers.
Afroconomy; In recent years, The Makeup industry has become quite saturated, did that put you off at all when you decided to go into the industry?
Dominique: In short, No.
Whilst Colour cosmetics received a long-awaited shakeup in recent years, we haven’t gone far enough, inclusive beauty ranges are underrepresented in High Street stores in the UK and POC are still having a mare in the High Street avoiding the dreaded ‘ash – finish’ of poorly matched foundations and the no-show, low pigment shadows thrust upon us through a lack of choice.
As a make-up enthusiast and self-taught makeup artist, I believed it was possible to curate a truly inclusive makeup collection at an affordable price point making beauty accessible for all.
During my maternity leave from my day job, I finally took the plunge and birthed Beau Bakers Launching at Beauty UK the largest beauty trade show outside London.
Afroconomy: So tell us How Beau Bakers Started?
Dominique: Beau Bakers initially started from me formulating my cosmetics in my kitchen. Which is how the name ‘Beau Bakers’ came about. We moved on to mass production and I launched Beau Bakers at Beauty UK the largest Beauty tradeshow outside London. On the second day of trading, we sold out.
Afroconomy: That is quite an achievement, what would you say makes Beau Bakers Unique?
Dominique: Thanks very much, it is very humbling, I would say what makes us unique is our strive to shake the colour cosmetics industry up, we want to start over, we want to challenge some of those stalemates in the industry.
For example, when it comes to naming our product range, we wanted to move away from the food fetishization of darker skin tones such as cocoa, chocolate the usual and so we ruled that out when curating. In our foundation range whilst typically one would expect the shades to range from light to dark and symbiotically the numbers representing those shades from low to high.
At Beau Bakers our shades range from deep to fair starting at 1.0 our deepest shade. We want to challenge dogma in the beauty industry, and we are brand to tear up the rule book in that regard.
Afroconomy: Wow ! that’s quite an ode to challenging colourism in the beauty industry, so what is next for Beau Bakers?
Dominique: We believe so, we want to challenge the status quo in colour cosmetics. Since our debut at Beauty UK last year Beau Bakers continued to grow from strength to strength selling digitally on our website and
One year on we have now progressed on to launch of a new inclusive 20 shade collection of full coverage foundation in addition to our existing liquid lipstick which lasts up to 24 hours in 17 variants and A collection of 8 nude lipsticks of varying inclusive beauty shades to suit every skin tone. to name a few of our product range.
The foundation is officially available on our online store from 20th October 2020. We are so grateful as Our dreams for Beau Bakers are already manifesting as we aimed to break into a multichannel presence and be represented in the Highstreet, we have already received the prospect of our foundation being sold in a department store (hush, hush – we are yet to finalise this so we don’t want to say too much.
Afroconomy: Amazing news! , we wish you well with the brand, what advice would you give to anybody wanting to start a business.
Dominique; At this stage of my journey, I am enjoying learning – every day is a school day and I am willing to make mistakes and rectify them. which leads me on to eradicating the concept of fear. Fear will hold you back and keep you back if you let it. So, my advice would be to kick fear to the curb. Start today, start with what you have, start before you are ready, start over… but just start. It doesn’t matter if they’re a million people already doing the business you are thinking of, nobody will do it like you. You have your unique style and once you find it bottle up and sell it.
Afroconomy; Do you have a website and how can you be contacted?
Dominique; Oh yes, I do have a website. My website URL is http://www.beaubakers.co.uk and my social media handles for Instagram and Facebook are https://www.instagram.com/beaubakersco and https://www.facebook.com/beaubakersco respectively. You can also watch my YouTube video of my new foundation via this link https://youtu.be/G_dU1wKx5A0
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