With her business acumen and resourcefulness, Jhalesa Lewis started Salt.xo with just $67 to her name.
Jhalesa Lewis, now 27 years old, looks back to the time when she founded her skincare store.
“I was a college student in my senior year at UCF when I decided to start a business. As you can imagine, as a college student, I didn’t have a lot of money to invest in my company. I only had $67 dollars to be exact. I didn’t let that discourage me,” the multimillionaire stated.
Unlike many multimillionaires, Lewis did not have everything handed to her. She had to work her way to the top, starting with a mere $67.
Lewis used the little money she had to make soaps in sample sizes from her kitchen. But everything did not go well at first. She had to make several batches to get the consistency and the look she wanted.
Fast forward to April 2018, Lewis launched her first soap via Facebook. Her family and friends helped her promote it.
The brand started off with 200 organic Instagram followers. Within a year, the Salt.xo’s following grew to a massive 170,000.
But that’s not the most impressive thing about Salt.xo and Lewis. The brand made over $100,000 in its first year, $4 million in its second, and a whopping $11 million in its third year.
For a brand with tons of competition in the skincare industry, that’s quite an impressive feat.
These revenues did not come to Lewis easily though. Looking back, Lewis said that she had to refund over $27,000 to irate customers who never received their package.
“We shipped 7,000 orders through UPS. Nearly half of the orders were lost or stolen. I felt so defeated because we made everything by hand and we lost so much money,” Lewis recalled.
At that moment Lewis knew she’d never let that happen again. And so she did. This year, Salt.xo is projected to reach over $11 million in sales.
But Lewis does not want to stop there. She continues to innovate using natural ingredients and look for new formulas to create the best vaginal hygiene products the world has ever known.
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