Sylvie Salanoa
Co-founder & CEO
Samoa
Sylvie Prudente from Switzerland met Kitiona Salanoa from Samoa in Honolulu at Christian volunteer movement, Youth With A Mission. They married and spent 10 years in Switzerland, before Sylvie came up with the idea of moving back to Samoa to start a business that would benefit their family and their village.
“We wanted to be part of the growth of the economy of a place where there was less than where we were living,” Sylvie says.
Kiti and Sylvie moved to Samoa with their three girls, Shana, Kezia and Tailani, but their first business idea didn’t bring the success Sylvie had hoped for. She tried exporting Samoan crafts to Europe, but it was only when a local craftsperson threw in a few soaps that business began to warm up.
“We were told to make soaps,” says Sylvie. “We had no idea how soaps are made so we did quite a bit of research and Mailelani was created.” In Samoan, Mailelani means ‘from Heaven’ and it’s the name of the business the couple launched together in 2000.
“I’m the one who asked my husband to come to Samoa to start a new life here, with our three daughters. Samoa is beautiful, it’s next to heaven,” Sylvie says.
Resources and facilities in Samoa can be limited, so Sylvie’s catchphrase is ‘We do with what we have’. The lack of access to sophisticated skincare ingredients could have been a hindrance, but Sylvie and Kiti have turned it into a core philosophy of their business – keeping it local. They use locally made, organic coconut oil, which is grown by at least 30 different families on the island and hand-pressed there.
At first, the couple made one unscented coconut oil soap. They now sell eight different soaps and an extensive range of body lotions, scrubs, massage oils, and other skincare products. All their products contains scents of Samoa, using frangipani, papaya, moso’oi (ylang ylang), vanilla, and cocoa to perfume their products. Sylvie says she’s usually the one who comes up with the ideas, but it’s her husband who turns them into reality.
A chemist from New Zealand visits Samoa regularly and has taught Kiti various tricks to help him concoct the products of Sylvie’s dreams. The couple have had plenty of support, but they needed it to weather the tsunami and cyclones they have faced over the years.
“We got help through grants. We’ve had a lot of help, a lot of encouragement. Many times we felt like giving up because of circumstances. The tsunami stopped everything, but people kept encouraging us and we kept going. And then we had cyclones and all sorts of things, but we knew we wanted to be doing this. We wanted to be in Samoa, using ingredients from Samoa, working with the people in the villages.”
For Sylvie, it’s important her products are as natural and healthy as possible. “Every ingredient is good for you – cocoa is an antioxidant, the papaya helps to renew the skin faster. If you have a sunburn, you put on the papaya lotion and it helps to heal the skin faster and you don’t peel,” she says. She has no regrets about moving to her husband’s birthplace and launching her skincare line.
“Having your own business is very exciting because you develop creativity that you didn’t know you had, you meet a lot of people and you’re your own boss.”
Her advice to others who might want to go into business is to make sure their heart is in it. “You really need to have that conviction, because it’s an investment, you have to give everything that you have. I had a lot of crying, it was not always easy, but because I knew that this is what I was supposed to do, that’s where I was supposed to be, you just always go back to it.
“Just know that it takes a lot of work,” she smiles.
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