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00:00hi everybody good morning how are y'all feeling today that was such an incredible conversation
00:18about reclaiming your crown and before we get into what we're about to talk about
00:22my name is dashonda brown i am the associate editor at essence girls united and i'm so excited to be
00:28here in person today and after a powerful conversation about reclaiming your crown i couldn't be more
00:33excited to facilitate this next discussion so founded by tagli's native olawanjo t'challa and
00:39prairie rosehyde alafia develops handcrafted award-winning clean and paint plant-based
00:45collections with unrefined shea butter african black soap coconut oil neem extract and boaba and
00:52moringa oils from the woman-led alafia village co-op yes all of that and inspired by the founders
01:00shared calling to do right by the world alafia has grown from the humble beginnings to a global
01:06enterprise all while preserving cultural traditions and knowledge and today we're going to unpack the
01:12inspiring story with the chief marketing officer herself linnea edwards so without further ado i'ma
01:18stop talking and please give a warm beauty carnival welcome to linnea edwards hey girl
01:26look at you i'm good how are you i'm doing well thank you look at you all beauty carnivaled up you
01:33got you got the you got the memo about the colors huh alafia is a very colorful brand so i had to
01:39dig in my closet and find something i love that and you know before i get into any conversation i always
01:45like to ask how's your mental health doing so how's your mind doing this morning i'm so glad that you
01:50asked that question um i'm doing well i'm happy to be back here in new orleans um excited to see
01:55all my favorite people in the front row um so um very happy to be back here been coming to new
02:03orleans since i was a kid so happy to be here to celebrate i'm so happy to have you you know beauty
02:08carnival is the perfect place to unpack your story because everything that i read like as i was reading i was
02:12like yo it's a lot no not only is it a lot but it's so beautiful and it sounds like there's such
02:17a great story behind it so we're going to jump right into it how was alafia founded okay so alafia
02:23began in 2003 and our owner his name is alawando chala born and raised in togo west africa so really
02:30tiny country um and so he uh grew up with his family literally in a one room kind of house with
02:38nine siblings and so he would pick shay nuts as a child and um he decided to move to the states his
02:45partner was over there visiting in the peace corps they met um and then he came back to the u.s and so
02:50when they got here he was like you know i need to be able to support my family and his mother gave him
02:54a few words when he left and said you cannot fail so i always like to share that story because i can't
02:59imagine my mother saying you can go but you cannot fail that's a heavy heavy load to lift
03:04so they came over to the states and they began selling uh shea butter coconut oil to other vendors
03:11and at some point he decided you know what let me go ahead and sell this product and make my own brand
03:15so um in 2003 um he founded the business and in 2008 we got into whole foods and that's really where
03:23alafia's story from a bigger broader perspective really took off so it really is that humble beginning
03:29story growing up coming to the u.s finishing college and just navigating it from there
03:34i love that and you know alafia promotes fair trade practices with its co-ops and women's
03:41empowerment initiatives so how does this come to life and how is it sustainable because we hear the
03:46term sustainable all the time what does that mean for the alafia brand so we have our alafia village
03:51in togo west africa so we have our own facility where we source our own raw materials so you have a
03:57lot of brands that are out there that like yeah i use shea butter i use coconut oil but they really
04:01don't know the sourcing story so our alafia village in togo we have between 150 and 200 women that work
04:07for us so we locally source our ingredients ship that over to washington state so we're based out of
04:13olympia washington and then we manufacture the product so from a sustainability perspective we're
04:18also very conscious about the packaging we use so all of our packaging has anywhere from 10% to 100% pcr
04:24and not sure people know what that even means but it means post consumer resin which means it's
04:28recycled bottle we're continually putting out there just because we know what the ecosystem it's bad to
04:33use 100 pure virgin plastic we're trying to be more conscious with that um so you know those ingredients
04:40are so important to us and again so many brands use these ingredients which is great but it's awesome
04:45that we have this ourselves and we also pay women a fair wage so we're basically essentially cutting out
04:51the middleman and having to buy from a third party we pay these women three times a greater salary
04:55so um yeah it all lends into the power behind who we are and i love that because like sustainability
05:02oftentimes is used as a buzzword like we hear it uh-huh but we don't know what it means we don't know
05:07what it looks like so it's like not only is your brand of essentially forest bias but you're very
05:11you're very aware about the economic footprint and the environmental footprint that you're making
05:15and the sustainability behind it since 100 and i mean obviously pie in the sky would love to get to a place
05:21where we're 100 pcr that obviously is not cheap so we're actively working and putting measures in place
05:27that over the next few years we can reach that ultimate goal but for now again being conscious about the
05:31ingredients we put in we're very clean natural brand and then having um you know recycled bottles is a great
05:37step in the right direction i love that yeah and how does the alafia co-op and the collective partners work with the
05:44us headquarters to make and produce the products yes so because we have our alafia village we literally
05:49produce our own shea butter coconut oil and african black soap and so specifically with african black
05:55soap is a really really cool how that even comes to life because this mixture of palm kernel oil um as
06:00well as shea butter mixed together sits out in the sun for weeks we pack all that up and ship it over
06:06um to our facilities here and then when we get it to washington state that's where we actually make our
06:11um african black soap liquid soaps um we make our shea butter based body washes coconut based uh body
06:17washes um so it's a pretty good good system and process obviously with covid we've definitely had
06:23delays um part of life but yeah that's how we do it we source our own ingredients ship them over and
06:29then we manufacture the products in the u.s so we're proud to say we are an american business
06:33that's great because as i was like reading your introduction and i was like listing off all the
06:37ingredients i was like oh these are ingredients ingredients it's not just you know what you see
06:41on the back of the bottle like moringa you know you have the different oils that's and we do have a
06:46lot of those other ingredients in it um and one really cool thing about alafia by having our um our alafia
06:52village we've been a social enterprise and what that really means for us is you see there's tons of
06:57businesses now that launch and they have a mission it's kind of like table stakes you have to have a
07:01mission yeah so for us since the beginning alawanjo was very passionate about okay the work we do here
07:07it has to go back to support us in west africa so on the side of every bottle you buy you will find
07:12stats everything from we've donated over 10 000 bicycles because kids most girls have to drop out
07:19of school by the age of 12 because they have to walk five miles in the heat to get to school
07:22oh my god so sending a bicycle over there is life-changing um we do eyeglass drives we do maternal
07:28care um one in 32 women suffer miscarriages in togo so for alawanjo it was important to create
07:34clinics so we can help these women have healthy births and that's hugely important so we've been
07:40a very conscious business from the start um and it's really exciting to say yeah we've been doing
07:45this for 20 years we're not just a brand who woke up and said hey let me create a mission right it
07:49really was ingrained in who we are um so our website updates it all of our packaging updates it so um
07:55it's kind of full circle which is is exciting for me to work for a business that's so passionate
08:00about what we do i love how we do it um well if no one told you this today i'm proud of you
08:05well thank you you're doing amazing things for real and you're pioneers in african black soap and
08:11shea butter like you said so how exactly is the process of creating these products from start to
08:17finish because you know we hear the terms organic and it's pure and it's raw but what does that look
08:21like for the alafia brand yep so again we plant shea butter trees which is awesome and they take
08:28i think close to 100 years to even really come to fruition so it's part of whole regenerative
08:32agriculture making sure we're planning because you know reforestation's huge um so again for the um
08:38african black soap again that's a mixture of palm kernel oil and shea butter mixed together to kind
08:43of create saponification um and then after that process is done has a sit out for like two to three
08:48weeks and then when that's ready to go it's kind of you know grounded up and then that gets shipped
08:52over to to our facilities in washington state um same with the shea butter we really pick the shea
08:57nuts pack it up ship it over um so we really are getting those true raw materials and then we're
09:03working in our facilities to make it a u.s product you know i don't i don't want the people at home or
09:08the people in the audience to roast me but i had no idea it came from a tree huh i had no idea it came
09:12from a tree uh shea nuts i had no idea i just know that i use it i just know that i grew up on it i
09:18had no idea that a tree was involved yep so it's good to know that that's the process of it and it
09:24sounds like you have a very good idea about the origin of these products because a lot of times you
09:28know we would slap something on our bodies or we would just you know go with the flow because
09:33somebody said that this is good for your skin but it sounds like you have a very good idea about
09:36the benefits of these raw ingredients we try to be super conscious and again whole foods is our
09:41number one retailer we've gotten distribution in target walmart and some other places but in order
09:46to be in whole foods you really have to have a clean product from from the start um so we're really
09:51proud of that no sulfates phthalates parabens again we're going on 20 years next year so that's really
09:56what we've stood for from the beginning even though now it's so much more prevalent but 20 years ago it
10:01wasn't as much of a thing right but that's really who we are so it really starts with those
10:05core natural ingredients not using synthetic colorants dyes fragrances we really try to be
10:11as clean as we can but also efficacious which is important and i also want to know about your
10:17textured hair collection yeah curls so tell us about the foundation of that and how does it set
10:23apart from all the other textured hair collections out there sure so um alawandro's daughters are biracial
10:30and so for him it was like okay how are we going to get these girls curls right
10:35that's really and truly so beautiful curls actually launched back in like 2010
10:39um it was really popular natural channel went away and then we revamped it so i came to the
10:45organization in 2019 and we were relaunching it and so again because we've been in whole foods
10:50that's where it launched so these are going to be by far the most cleanest natural products
10:54that you're going to find for hair care so again no alcohol no synthetic fragrance dyes
11:01alcohols um just a super clean formula it's vegan which a lot of natural hair care brands aren't
11:07vegan and we also use again to the sustainability point 100 pcr bottles so we're very conscious about
11:13what goes in it what we're serving to our guests um but a few other nods you know it's a lot of black
11:19founded businesses we still are black owned business which is important um on top of that
11:24we have a maternal care aspect of our beautiful curls collection so what that means is i mentioned
11:29earlier in togo we support maternal care so we do that here as well because we understand the
11:34disparities for black women that we face going through childbirth so we launched a program called
11:40beautiful arrival and that really is about the sale of beautiful curls products and we work with two
11:45organizations uh one is actually called equity before birth and another one based here in new
11:50orleans is called sister midwife so we're working with these organizations to make sure that they
11:54have the funding and they can help train other midwives to be side by side with these black women
12:00or women of color as they have healthy births um so we really are about the impact creating a clean
12:06great product for you um so it's just really really exciting and i'm using my hair today by the way so
12:11okay shameless plug if you want girls like her make sure to use the products yes for sure you you got
12:20to plug yourself in i mean we're at carnival today's the day yes absolutely absolutely and my last
12:26question before we go is alafia is you know rooted in west african roots so why is it important for the
12:32brand to maintain its cultural identity as it continues to scale you know and get to the mainstream point and
12:38how is this authentic representation you know empowering users of your products yes so that's
12:43an amazing question um and again i mentioned alawandro's mother her name was aina so he celebrates her and
12:51everything that he does and so we even have a day off every monday after mother's day and it's called
12:56aina day that's how much he loves his mother's he gives us a personal holiday off so the business is
13:02rooted in her words of you cannot fail and so because of that we're going to continue the legacy
13:08and live on and thrive so because that's who we are where we came from we can't change course as we
13:14grow in scale the impact stats that we put on our bottle again year after year you can see the impact
13:19so we're going to continue that mission as we grow in scale we can do even larger statistics help more
13:25women both here in the u.s. and in west africa so it's so ingrained in who we are we can't we can't
13:31ever change course that is just fundamentally who we are we're going to keep going at it
13:35i love that and before we do bid the adieu you know so how can people get in touch with you
13:40and support the brand and support everything that you have coming up so whole foods target walmart
13:46um we're going into some drug accounts sprouts alafia.com um you can really find us most places
13:53and we have a booth here shout out booth 2340 we're here as well i love that and you know thank
14:00you so much for taking the time to speak to us everybody alafia's chief marketing officer
14:06linnea edwards please give her a round of applause you were absolutely incredible we learned so much
14:10about sustainability about the brand about the origin and thank you so much for sharing this
14:15inspiring story behind your brand and yours as well so thank you so much and up next we're going to be
14:20keeping it real with the triumphs and the challenges of cosmetic surgery with our nip tuck talks panel so
14:26make sure to stay tuned
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