hi everybody! welcome back to “Just A Girl…”! this week we are stepping outside the realm of music because entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes as do what they are offering the world.
WELCOME TO OYIN HANDMADE.
Jamyla Bennu, ingredient-conscious & generally crafty chick is Grand Mixtress of Oyin Handmade. always having been one for mixing things together and personalizing products for her own needs & preferences, Oyin Handmade was about experimentation, having fun, and feeling in control of what she was using on her body.
when she realized that even some of her favorite ‘natural’ bodycare items tended to use petroleum, mineral oil, corn oil, or other non-nourishing ingredients; she decided she could do just as well by herself, and started working on her own recipes. With research, study, and good old trial & error, Oyin Handmade has strived since its beginning to create products that are not just natural, but nourishing.
born in winter 2001 when Jamyla started sharing her all-natural bodycare products with a small circle of family and friends, from there, Oyin Handmade has moved to fairs and shows, and the inevitable launch of the website in spring of 2003.
joined by her husband and partner Pierre… and over the years by a slowly growing, dedicated, and brilliant team of Oyin HoneyBees… and a somewhat distracting but super fun new HoneyBaby born in 2008, Oyin Handmade is focused on bringing the world love-filled, natural products.
of course being an entrepreneur, wife and mom means a sista is busy to say the least but in watching Oyin Handmade grow, I really wanted to get her take on the contribution the interweb has made to that growth. not too mention that when I first moved to New york, Jamyla and Pierre were two of the first people I met and they took me right in and showed me the most amazing film “Baraka” which if you haven’t seen, you must. so to watch their business become established and expand has been a pleasure, so please also check out their website Exit the Apple. AND Pierre wrote one of the books that I consider to be a major influence on my life as an artist “Bullshit or Fertilizer”, which I think somebody swiped, so I’m prolly gonna ask for another copy after this..;-).
but anyway!
this amazing sista took time out to answer some of my questions:
me: do you feel that you’re online presence has contributed to your sales and growth as a brand?
Jamyla Bennu: our online presence has more or less CREATED our sales and growth as a brand. when oyinhandmade started, it was a collection of stuff i’d experimented and created for my own use, then shared with family and friends. this was in like 2002, 2003, and web 2.0 hadn’t hit with social media and crowdsourcing and community building and such, but i’d been blogging for a few years and was active in a popular natural hair discussion site, nappturality.com. when i created the site for oyin, it was fellow members of that site who tried it first and who spread the word. the internet was 100% responsible for oyin’s growth over the past 7 years — i can count on one hand the number of times we’ve done the ‘traditional vending’ thing.
me: how much time do you spend online promoting your brand?
Jamyla Bennu: i try to check in via twitter at least once or twice a day, blog at least once a week, and create a youtube video and/or podcast once a month. when things are super busy in the production kitchen, that can easily drop to tweeting once every three days and blogging once or twice a month. we are extremely lucky to have a good amount of buzz among our customers, bloggers, youtubers, etc, so even when i’m not doing the online promotion myself, there is usually something being mentioned out there in the interwebs. we are super thankful to all our customers who review and recommend our products!
me: what are some of your fave sites? (i.e. espy.com, etc..)
Jamyla Bennu: nappturality.com is a great resource and community for natural hair and it’ll always have a spot in my heart since it’s where i belonged when oyin was born. naturallycurly.com is another community/resource and they also have an online shop for many different types of hair products, including ours. i love facebook, as a 1-stop shop to keep in touch with my family and friends in a life that is often too busy for its own good. we use amazon.com at least once a week to save ourselves some errand or another – everything from a replacement laptop battery to a copy of God Of War 3.
me: are you using any technology to assist you in building your brand, besides your website?
Jamyla Bennu: we use google voice to route our business calls to whichever oyin honeybee is on customer service duty at the time. that is SUPER handy. but, that’s kind of backend, not brand building, huh. we do a video podcast and are lucky enough to have pierre bennu – a fabulous, award winning filmmaker – on staff to direct and edit our podcasts, commercials, and other media. the oyin brand benefits BIG TIME from his one of a kind film sensibility – it’s helped position us as that goofy, approachable, mom&pop company and we feel it’s helping us connect to our customers in a different way.
me: as entrepreneurs, networking is very important, in person and online. have you found that this is easier with all of the tools available online? or do you prefer the old fashioned method of person to person net working?
Jamyla Bennu: we are hermits and that’s a big part of why we became entrepreneurs in the first place: online all the way!! we are only just now beginning to come out of our ‘virtual business’ shell with the opening of our saturday boutique in baltimore a year ago, and now with multiple bottling parties per month, when we get a chance to meet and work with our wonderful customers and volunteers. so i guess we’re working kind of backwards, starting with the virtual and just getting around to the ‘old fashioned’ way many years after the fact!
hey, it is all good! because that is the beauty of having all of these tools at our disposal, we can start low cost, online and build from there. so shouts to Jamyla Bennu (and Pierre and Honeybaby..lol), as well as all the Honeybees that are supporting Oyin Handmade’s efforts to make us all more beautiful and healthy at the same time! make sure you check out the Oyin Handmade website and if you’re in Baltimore, stop by the shop!
now, as this week past was the interactive portion of SXSW and this is a blog about the different and varied uses of technology for artists and others, I wanted to point you to a great article on abcnews.com that features some of the tech that was presented at this year’s SXSW Interactive. enjoy! and if your in Austin for the music portion of SXSW, def stop by and check out the sistas rocking for Women in Hip Hop at “The Revival” presented by Emergence.
so I’ll check y’all next week, be cool in between, k?
peaces and deuces,
rox
© J.A.G. Music and Media, LLC
