(train engine roaring)
[Jackie Granchamps] New York moves the rest
of the world, whatever trends that we create
here, it just goes around the globe.
(dramatic music)
New York shapes culture. (camera clicking)
(car engine roaring)
My name is Jackie Granchamps,
I try to be the mentor to people that I never got.
I would say before you starting a business, decide
if this is something that you were going to be passionate
about for the next decade, you have to realize
that it takes ten years to be an overnight success.
First time I sold was in a market on the street
and that's when the spark that this could
be a business was really born at the time that
maker's movement was in its infancy.
You couldn't find handmade goods anywhere.
I wanted to expand on that idea from a monetary standpoint
of completely bootstrapped the business from the beginning.
It's interesting how everything happened.
It was really very organic, after 2008
I found myself laid off and that's what led me
to find a hobby which was soap making.
(engine roaring)
(slow music)
You can see this office is pretty tight.
I kind of have the space, if you look around,
it's very modular, things can move around.
Things are collapsible, like these are just my foldable
market tables so sometimes I'll take them down.
If I need more space, I started making a lot of products.
It started to become a little expensive.
(laughing)
So I thought like I have to start selling this
in order to kind of feed this love of mine.
I think the customers inform everything I do
as a business owner, I found that people wanting
to keep in touch so that's where social media
started really playing a part.
One of the drawbacks of social media is
that every time an algorithm changes you are not being seen.
Maybe ten percent of the thousands
of followers that you have are
seeing you make sure that you're taking the audience
from social media and getting them onto the mail list
so that you can continue to communicate the most important
thing I would say build your email lists.
As I was forming the business I was a little bit unsure
of the quality was it good enough?
Were people just being nice and saying that they liked it.
I come from a family of very strong women
and very independent women, my aunt Cecile was a woman
who loves the best of everything.
Anytime she came to visit your hair
had to be in place, your clothes had to be great.
She would just kind of give you the once overlook, you know
and she didn't have to say a word.
You knew that she was going to say
like this should be better, It trained us girls to really
be aware of as black women how the world would perceive you.
It puts a certain pressure on you.
But you knew like whatever came from her would be the best.
I sent her a box and she tried all the products
and she loved it and so I decided to name the company
after her because with every product I'd make, even now
if it would not meet her high standards, it goes nowhere.
(crying)
these are my latest batches of soap.
The intoxifying charcoal soap,
It has been my number one best seller.
Since I started, kind of my baby.
It took two years to develop that formula.
So anytime you make handmade soap it actually takes
thirty days for the soap to cure.
And then you test and then you try it again.
So that one I'm very proud of.
I don't know if people believe
in like Reiki or infusing your energy.
I feel like my energy and my happiness goes
into the products and reaches to people.
Cecile's is definitely a one-to-one personal business.
Canal street market had been on my
target list for almost two years.
Since it opened, it's provided such an opportunity.
They represent small brands at trade shows with wholesale.
That is the guidance that I need so that I can level up.
So in this one is cucumber, rose hydrosol
and then a little bit of witch hazel.
Brand stated they want to build a relationship, right?
But what does that relationship actually mean?
Since this really prompted me to start doing questionnaires
nailing down my target market, it was one hundred
and fifty women, I had a really nice sample size
and I could really understand what people
were looking at for skincare age wise.
I could understand how many steps were
their skincare routine, how important
what's it that really informed what kind
of products I needed to be creating, and then
who those products would be marketed to and how.
There's in endless number of apps
that automate marketing for you.
There's an app that sends you an ad that's
pre-made it actually chooses products
for you based on the traffic of your website.
So it prioritizes the products that are getting the most
attention, finding a platform that helps to automate
all of these functions for you.
That's really the power of CRM tools.
The light went on and I'm kind of realizing how
much more I can do with that powerful automation.
Twenty twenty it was transformative seeing the world
stand on its feet, millions of people around the world
really telling black people on this planet like you are
worth something saying that my black life mattered.
It finally said to me that I could be myself.
I don't have to be small anymore.
The next step for Cecile's, I think from here
is to get bigger, to start wholesaling.
I can see that there is something so big here.
It's just motivated me to do more than I thought.