Old Harbour native develops hair and skin care business

he 24-year-old tells JIS News that the idea for the company came while she was still a student at Wolmer’s High School for Girls.

“I was going on a natural journey myself where I became a vegetarian. I started looking for natural ways to take care of my hair and my skin,” says the Old Harbour, St. Catherine native.

Her sister was also into haircare products. “She was more into the aesthetics of things like how she combed her hair. She told me she found something online that we could use to do our hair. I saw this as an opportunity to start a business,” Miss Gordon recalls.

As she moved on from high school to the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus, she not only earned a degree in Marketing and Management Studies but also valuable experience that strengthened her business acumen.

She also has a master’s in integrated marketing communications.

“I joined the Guild entrepreneurship competition and met some people who introduced me to YouTube. I really honed in on YouTube and other experiences and kind of combined that with my own natural journey experience. That’s how Shevielle came about,” she says.

The holistic hair and skin care company was born in 2016 and has since grown to provide a range of products to include castor oil, tumeric and rosemary bar soap, honey cinnamon soap, herbal butter, coco lemon oil, mango charcoal soap, coconut oil, fenugreek and oats moisturiser, herbal aloe shampoo and herbal and oats conditioner.

The items are available online and through various natural health stores and retail outlets, including at Devon House.

Miss Gordon, who was among exhibitors at Christmas in July this year, is proud of the company, which has a dedicated clientele and also offers skin and haircare, nutrition and exercise tips.

It is hard to believe that the meticulous businesswoman, who places strong focus on customer service and marketing only started to take the business seriously about two years ago.

She tells JIS News that initially, she saw Shevielle as something she loved to do rather than a moneymaking venture, and it was in 2020/2021, that she really started to position the business from being a hobby or side hustle “to really believing it can be a real source of income”.

At that time, Jamaica was dealing with COVID-19, and given the reality of the virus, which limited face-to-face contact, Miss Gordon knew she would have to make some changes in the business model in order to survive.

“I used to be on campus telling people about my business but COVID-19 caused me to stop all that, stopping all of my income. I had to go back to the drawing board,” she says.

“I spent a lot of time creating standard operating procedures for my business. The pandemic proved good in terms of slowing me down to sort out the structural part of the business, but it also forced me to think of new ways to get people to know about it,” she points out. One of the new ways to promote her company, was through the creation of virtual Shevielle Events. “We provide holistic hair and skin care, meaning that we not only provide the products but also lifestyle and nutrition tips to improve the hair and skin. I started these online webinars and livestreams to get people to know more about us, to position us as a health and wellness brand. What this did was to create leads,” she notes.

“Before we would only get new leads from a flier or being at an event, so that kind of changed how Shevielle started to get new leads or sales,” she adds.

Miss Gordon’s sparkling enthusiasm and dogged spirit have helped her overcome some challenges on her business journey, including lack of support from persons, who, she says, felt that “I could have done better with my life”.

“It became extremely difficult since 2021 when I transitioned from being a student into working. The support is somewhat there but it is not as much as it was before,” she tells JIS News.

Another obstacle is how potential lenders view her because of her youth.

“It is easy for you to be overlooked in the space. Maybe, because you are young, they don’t think you are serious about what you are doing. Just by how I look alone I could feel them going ‘oh she is cute, she is here, that’s nice, well done, but we are not lending you money of any significant value because you need some time’,” she says. “I do understand that with young people it’s risky… but you may find a young person who is just as qualified with a well-prepared presentation, plans and everything,” she expresses.

Miss Gordon’s advice for other young people looking to start a business is to get some formal training.

She shares that despite the natural entrepreneurial spirit of many Jamaicans, without a formal approach their dreams may not be realised.

“I have been in the entrepreneurial space since high school, and back then, I never really knew as much. When I came to UWI, there were competitions and opportunities for people 30 and under… . You find a lot of young people who don’t get to the stage of tertiary learning and they start hustling.

“But because they don’t know how to work smarter, sometimes, their ventures don’t work out or they get into jobs that aren’t fulfilling,” she says.