Today we’d like to introduce you to Kymani Ashanti.
Hi Kymani, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Our story has been an absolute WILD ride since the beginning. To start, my name is Kymani Ashanti, I’m 23 years old and the owner of The Ashanti Collection. A skincare brand that makes beautiful, quality skincare products! It all started in December of 2020, we went VIRAL on Tiktok! We quite literally turned into an overnight sensation. In one night, we went from getting a couple of orders a week to 200+ in a DAY. Since then, we’ve been ON go! Every time we restocked we’d sell out, my boyfriend and I would work 16+ hour days, trying to pack orders and fulfill our demand. After all, this has NEVER EVER been something we were familiar with! Our business soon took over our entire 2 bedroom apartment. We left ourselves a tiny little bed in the corner, and that was it, the rest of the apartment was business. We literally didn’t even use our kitchen for food, which forced us to eat out EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year! But hey, what can we say we were DEDICATED! Fast forward to 2021, we recently acquired a 3,200 sq ft office space (that’s a whole story in it itself). And now, in 2022 we’ve organically grown our social media platforms totaling over HALF A MILLION followers! We’ve sold over 60,000 BODY BUTTERS! Hand piped by my wonderful, uber-supportive business partner and boyfriend Logan Sidesinger. He gave me the initial $600 investment to start my business from his Christmas bonus check. We’ve turned that $600 into almost a million-dollar in sales! Our goal next year is to get into retail!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The ride has been anything BUT SMOOTH for us. After going completely viral on TikTok. We had NO IDEA what we were doing! We were only used to getting maybe a dozen orders a week (if we were lucky)! Now we had hundreds upon hundreds of orders AT ONCE! And it was just us two. We had no growing pains or a timeframe to figure things out. WE JUST HAD TO GET IT DONE! That’s all we knew. We literally slept 5 hours a night, sometimes even less. We worked all day! To the point, at one point I almost passed out from exhaustion. It was a constant grind; wake up, work, post office, make product, ship, eat (sometimes), ship, ship, ship. It became to the point our phones would ding with sales, and every sale started to become a stressor for me. I would literally get stressed out to get sales because we were SOOO OVERWHELMED! Every small business owner out there is probably like, how dare she complain about GETTING SALES! But like I said, we were not adequately prepared for this overnight sensation! It literally got to a point we had to shut our website down for an extended period of time to catch up to our workload.
We’ve been impressed with The Ashanti Collection, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
So our brand is The Ashanti Collection! What we want everyone to know about our brand, is that we want to MAKE SKINCARE FUN AGAIN! A few years ago, we stumbled upon body butter on Instagram. And I was completely blown away as to all the AMAZING powers body butter holds! But we only saw boring white butters, with simplistic scents… and I was like how can I spice these up, without comprising the integrity of the product. And wallah after months of through and intense research, and fail after fail..our BOMB BEAUTIFUL FAMOUS VIBRANT COLORFUL body butters were born! We specialize in beautiful, unique body butters. With mouth-watering fragrances! Our products look amazing, smell amazing, and FEEL EVEN BETTER! We’ve expanded to exfoliating sugar scrubs, luxurious body oils, and body frostings! All BOMB products that truly leave your skin GLOWING, SOFT, SMOOTH, SUPPLE, AND HYDRATED! What sets us apart is our unique scents, attention to detail in our products, and the POWER OF OUR PRODUCTS! As we always say, SKINCARE HAS NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD!
What does success mean to you?
How do I define success… What a simplistic yet loaded question. I define success as the ability to be free. Be free to travel. Be free financially. The ability to create, forge, and WILL my own destiny, not controlled by anyone else. Success emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Success = freedom.
Pricing:
- $14
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theashanticollection.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theashanticollectionco/
Image Credits
Logan S
