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Rosemary Awoh

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While a lot of youths out there are getting involved in criminal activities and rebellious acts, blaming the society for their shortcomings, a 20-year-old Mass Communication student of Babcock University, Awoh Rosemary, whose father passed on at age six, leaving her with single parenting, has become the CEO of Sweet Indulgence, an organic skincare enterprise. She has become an entrepreneur today.

During a press briefing in Lagos recently, Rosemary said she started making skincare products in December last year and decided to do something unique by using cup cakes to mold soap with crested flower designs to get something attractive that would get people to indulge in it, and that was where the name Sweet Indulgence emanated.

She said: “I make soap, body waters, body lotion, body scrub, olive balm and facial oil and they are all organic with natural products like honey, Shea butter and other natural contents with no preservatives.”

Business-minded Rosemary who hails from Delta state now juggles between working and schooling with ease as she is already accustomed to hard work from her childhood, when she would help her mother, a senior lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at YABATECH, with keen interest in her baking workshop and decorating event centers.

Her life as an entrepreneur started from primary school: “I would buy things from stores and take it to class to sell, and my class teacher encouraged me by mandating my classmates to buy everything they needed from me. While in high school I stringed simple beads and sold to my friends,” she said.

She added that she got inspired to make natural skincare products from compliments about her glowing skin on her TV show on Arcadia mobile TV- The DIY Slab With Awoh Rosemary.

“I was using natural products from the market and I would spend a lot of money buying them, so I decided I could make something as nice and tell people I use my own product.

“I searched for the recipe online but the first time I tried it out, it turned out bad because I did not get the right chemical measurement, but with time I got it right and improved immensely” she said.

She got her friends to experiment her first liquid black soap and bar soap by selling to them. “They were basically my first clients; I would sell to them and they would complain about mild reactions, but in no time it became perfect with no reactions.

“I started receiving positive feedbacks from customers and now I have a good number of customers with frequent orders home and abroad and in less than five months the turnout have been impressive”.

“I won an Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in school this year and that got me publicity from Radio station. My department did a biography on me and people were surprised that an undergraduate has the time and passion for creativity and business. My picture is in my VC’s office and this attracted interviews from the media,” she said.

Rosemary concluded that she looks forward to exporting her products to more countries and advised Nigerian youths to get creative with distinctiveness, as that would go a long way to make them useful to themselves and the society at large.

Credit: Guardian Woman, interview by Maria Diamond