Today we’d like to introduce you to Salome Sallehy.
Hi Salome, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
It all started in Australia where I met my Sugar Guru. She showed me that I don’t have to suffer through painful waxing. She showed me that there was a safe, natural, and gentle way to get rid of unwanted hair – sugaring!
After a lifetime of waxing and shaving – not without incident – I had finally found an alternative that not only gives me a miraculous glow but is both gentle on my sensitive skin and the planet. It was a unicorn moment; finding a product that is everything; all benefit, no risk…no waste…no nasty chemicals.
I’d been traveling around the world with my family for three months and it was time to de-fuzz. As serendipity would have… it I met her; the woman that would change the course of my life and set my sensitive skin free from the pain, torture and injury of waxing and threading. The results blew me away, and the byproduct was even more amazing; “the sugar wax is so natural you could eat it???”
My middle eastern roots ensured that battling the fuzz is a lifetime endeavour, so I had tried every possible hair removal method known to (wo)man, or so I’d thought. “How had I missed this?” Over the course of the following days, my sugar guru shared her secrets with me and brought me into my glow.
Three months later, I was still traveling with my family and our love for our planet had grown immensely when I met my sugar tribe in the South of France. These women – 7th generation sugar makers from North Africa – took me into their fold and showed me their art of sugar-making in the cavernous hammams beneath the bustle of the city.
Everything came into focus. I was empowered by these women and this art, and I had to do something and pay it forward. Fueled by the heartbreak of watching my three years old dodge plastic waste as he played on the beach and armed with a secret 3000 years old, I set out to make a difference.
I continued to experiment with the art of sugar-making until I struck gold in a lab in California. Our formula has modernized the ancient art of sugar to deliver a safe, easy and effective hair removal system that you can use anywhere…literally anywhere in the world.
I’ve created a system that’s clean, green and effective, and I want to share it with everyone. I want to empower others to take control of their fuzz with a product that comes from nature and returns to nature without harming our only planet. Everyone wins!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never a smooth road when you set out to change the world. I think our biggest hurdle was right at the beginning. After nearly two years of formulating, planning, building and doing all of the things that it takes to get a manufacturing business off the ground, we finally made a soft launch announcement on International Women’s Day in 2020. Four days later, the world shut down and we had to close down our facility which had just opened. Employees that were just hired had no idea what to do and we had to get crafty with accommodating the times.
Shipments of one of our jars was also affected by Covid-19, which caused a six months delay and the domino effect of breaks in the supply chain. I think that in the face of those crises, I learned that we’re rather resilient and that set the tone for the 2 years that have followed.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sugar Sugar Wax LLC?
When I registered the business in 2018, sugaring was only known to be done in salons. There weren’t any at-home sugaring products that didn’t require strips or spatulas. In fact, sugaring was a fairly new concept that was only known in the urban centers of America, and for good reason. The sugaring wax/paste formulas that were available for beauty professionals were, and still are, impossible for someone to use at home without extensive training. We set out to create a reusable sugaring wax – yes, I said reusable because each lump of wax can be used 8-10 times when any other wax is only applied and used once – that anyone can use. We’ve achieved that because our formula is used by ten years old getting ready for dance or swim, 70 years old that are sugaring that chin hair that comes with age, and even beauty professionals, whom we offer a certification course for Sugaring Facials.
And it’s not just for women. Askmen.com awarded us with the year’s Best Body Hair Remover and about 20% of our customers are men.
The feedback we keep getting is that our Glow Goop is so easy to use. It’s a totally different way of removing hair and you don’t need any equipment, strips or spatulas, but once you get the hang of it, you can’t go back to conventional waxing or heaven forbid; razors.
Our customers use it everywhere they have hair or fuzz. Something that has surprised me is that we have customers who are using it to exfoliate and don’t want to remove the hair, which is possible when you lift the sugar slowly rather than flick it off.
Our products are available online on our store sugarsugarwax.com and now available on Amazon Prime as well. We have some retail partners, like Urban Outfitters and others, but our full selection and bundles are only available on our website.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
As I mentioned earlier, Covid was our first and biggest crisis, given that our brand was born only days before the lockdown. What that taught us is that there’s opportunity wherever you find obstacles. We learned that we are resilient beyond imagination. When the shutdown happened and I couldn’t go anywhere, even to the place of business that I’d just built, I felt that I needed to connect with other people that cared about some of the same things that I did. That’s when I founded Natural Beauty Summit, a non-profit organization committed to educating consumers on consumables. At our first online event, I interviewed experts in health, authors, pharmacists, inventors, researchers, oncologists, enthobotanists and many others on the impact of products of our daily beauty regimens on our health and disease. We’ve hosted two other events since and continue to grow the community.
In a crisis, you’re often faced with the question of ‘why am I doing this?’ and if you don’t have a good and convincing answer, you’re gonna have to face that with yourself. I definitely learned that there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.
Pricing:
- Glow Goop sugaring wax & exfoliant is $36 and that’s about a 6 month supply of hair removal since it’s reusable
- Clean Slate cleansing water is $29
- Silk Slip hyaluronic acid serum for face & body is $92
- Detox Dust moisture & toxin absorbing powder is $26
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sugarsugarwax.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sugarsugar_wax/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sugarsugarwaxus
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERMuE5fAKeBFuZuHhfkGcQ
- Other: https://www.naturalbeautysummit.org/
Image Credits
bentostudio.com
