International brand lands in the Bushveld during lockdown

How did two unlikely characters pull it off?

2020 - the Lockdown year - proved to be a pivotal point for many people: you either had to sink or swim. Regarding my family, we share in the tenacity of many of our fellow South Africans and facing a financial crisis ourselves, we adopted a "do or die" stance. The new normal was so far out of our comfort zone we decided we might as well get good and solidly uncomfortable. My 65 year-old Mom and I decided to take a risk and start something new.

Browsing the internet late into the night, we came across a product which the beauty industry calls a "holy grail". A clean effective skincare range with good quality, science based ingredients that tackle pigmentation, fine lines, breakouts and even great collagen building peptides. A tried and tested award winning range even picked by the Oprah magazine as a favourite. So sought after in Europe and America but not available in South Africa? Ding,ding,ding...lightbulb! We immediately contacted Timeless Skin Care and asked them for distributorship. The worst that could happen is they would say No, right? They replied with a 23 page document we needed to complete to even be considered.

Oh my goodness, the first hard decisions needed to be made. We couldn't complete the documents without a registered company, import and export licenses and a solid business plan. How are we going to do this during lockdown?

Between "n boer maak n plan" and a lot of grace we assembled what seemed like a novel to send to a very strained SARS. Next we had the business plan to complete which consisted of a whole two staff members. We answered their 23 page questionnaire with a lot of dreaded not applicables and before we could overthink it Timeless Skin Care USA requested a zoom meeting. I told myself a million times don't say "Ja" or "Lekker" but hey we're South Africans and with all the nerves it was my answer to every other question. We really thought we'd have to start looking for something else. Favour was on our side, the right person at the right time felt they could take a chance on us. They said yes!

In July we had a major setback when my Mom fell and crushed two of her vertebrae. It was almost more than we could bear. If it wasn't for faith we certainly would've been down the rabbit hole of hopelessness. In between multiple 6 hr road trips to specialists we tried to stay positive and keep focus.

We still had no idea how we were going to ship the product to South Africa so we went straight for the big guns. We asked the biggest international shipping company if they could help us. "You have to have a 3 month COD record with us before we can assist " to which we replied "Please send us the application forms anyway and only think positive thoughts while you're doing it". Two days later we had an account and our first shipment was on it's way.

We came close to giving up multiple times - but we held on- and you can too! We'll be forever grateful we never gave up as it's a fantastic product we can really stand behind. We receive rave reviews from local clients daily which has given us back a sense of achievement.

The words from South African icon, Nelson Mandela, has become our daily mantra:

"Nothing is impossible until it's done".