Today on the blog we feature, artisanal soap maker Lakshana Leelakrishnan of Nakedly Yours.  The maker shares with us in detail about her venture and the new line up, she plans to showcase at our Coimbatore event – By Hand From The Heart Makers Market.

About yourself.

I began my career as a hotelier and have worked in global brands in both India and London. Being a people person came naturally to and enjoyed working in the hospitality industry. However I felt a void with respect to my creativity and ideologies close to my heart. In order to keep me distracted during this dilemma I learnt soap and cosmetics crafting from an apothecary in London. There was no looking back ever since. What started as a passion to fuel my creativity then turned into my profession. I thoroughly enjoy concocting, divine smelling skin treats which are so gentle on the skin and the environment.

How did you begin Nakedly Yours and how has it evolved over the years?

Hailing from Ooty, The Nilgiris, I have grown one with nature and have always been fascinated by its abundant resources. Ever since I came back from London in 2014, I wanted to make use of the resources locally available from the Nilgiris biosphere to create economic opportunities for the local community. I initially started cosmetics crafting in a minuscule manner just for gifting purpose and my individual use. Friends and family coaxed me to start selling it as they could see a real difference on their skin. I decided to test the waters in small flea markets. The response and feedback were so encouraging and I kept participating in more such events for two years.

When I got to know about a flea market in Cochin, I immediately participated knowing Kerala is the hub for piloting FMCG products. It is there I met my co-founder, Harsha Badhran who happened to visit the flea market. Having similar love for handcrafting, involving local communities and love for ethical and environment friendly products made us come together and conceptualise Nakedly Yours. Nakedly Yours carefully crafts 100% vegetarian, ethical, fresh and cruelty friendly soaps and cosmetics. I work on the product line up and Harsha works on bringing it out to a larger platform. However we are closely involved in each others roles as well. Many a times Harsha suggest different product range or fragrances and its a lot of fun to formulate it. We spend a lot of time sourcing ingredients too. We predominantly sell our products online and in Flea markets. We are working towards an exclusive flagship store and pop up kiosks.

What are your displaying at the By Hand, From The Heart in Coimbatore.

We will be displaying our range of Bath products like a variety and wide range of artisanal soaps and bath accessories like natural loofahs. Facial care products like lip balm, lip scrubs, facial Exfoliator, face mask, face oils. Hair care products like shampoo bar and a range of hand concocted hair oil. Body care products like  body Exfoliator, lotion bar and rich and luxurious body butters. Cosmetic ranges like illuminator, lip sticks  etc

What is your niche?  

All our products are handcrafted and made with the finest ingredients.  We put in a lot of effort in sourcing our raw materials. We believe in  the Farm to user concept where we can trace back all our raw materials in our products. I see a lot of similar brands who just buy their raw material from big companies and some even import the bases and DIY kits from various countries and just mix the products here. Nakedly yours on the other hand sources from small farmers and business. We have very stringent quality control and a have formulated a list of policies to help us with our vision of giving back to the community.

Your work space.

My work space is a bit of everything. There is table full of all the possible research material you can think of. I spend most of my (when I am not crafting cosmetics) researching about ingredients and its effectiveness. I believe in constantly learning and updating. Then there is a mad chemist corner where the new inventions and quality control tests happen. There is a crafting kitchen where all the products are manufactured. We also have an area specifically to dry and store our botanics apart from our regular storage areas.

A typical day at Nakedly Yours.

A typical day at Nakedly yours is calmingly chaotic. As rhetorical as it may sound, it stays true to the quote. We are currently scaling up our manufacturing unit which would take a couple of months, until then we hand-craft small batches of the products. Therefore there is quite a lot of work to ensure consistency and quality remains the same batch after batch. This is particularly difficult when you use Au naturel products. For example an essential oil of one batch would react differently in one batch of soap than the other batch. We had a classic example where one of our raw materials, a base oil to make soaps, normally renders the soap white.

There was this once when the same oil was slight darker (natural occurrence) in colour and our soaps turned a mild yellow. Everything remained the same but the colour had a huge impact. Therefore the chaos sets in to keep up the pace to meet the demand and ensure that the consistency remains the same. The calmness comes from the place itself (The facility over looks farm on one side and forest on the other) and all the heavenly aromas around like freshly distilled lavender oil or the crisp comforting eucalyptus aroma from the freshly foraged leaves.

About your new line of natural cosmetics and care products. 

We have formulated a new line of vegan lipsticks and tinted lip balms which is formulated entirely with plant based butters and waxes. We have introduced a liquid illuminator for the face. It has been one of our fastest sellers. We have introduced face serums with probiotics and green coffee and aloevera.

You have displayed at BHFTH before what is your experience.

BHFTH is not like just another events. The team was extremely professional with their approach. This indeed was great as they knew what they were doing. They  brought in great crowd which was the buying type. It turned out to be one of our best events so far.

Meet the Maker at By Hand From The Heart: MAKERS MARKET – 22nd Edition
Date: Friday – Saturday, 2nd – 3rd February, 2018
Time: 10:00 a.m – 8:00 p.m

Venue: Jenneys Residency – Ruby Hall & Art Houz Gallery
Address: 2/2, Avinashi Road, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu 641014. India.

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