Botanika overcame the pandemic and today has its vegan makeup line

Wara Arteaga /La Paz

Although in the Pandemia Lorgia was about to "throw in the towel" and abandon its Botanika ecological cosmetics initiative, this November made its dream of presenting its own vegan makeup line a reality.

His initiative began to take shape five years ago, with skin care products: ramcillants, ecodantes, bamboo dental brushes, serums and hair oils, among others.

During all that time, in parallel, Mercado produced the formulas to present its vegan characteristics makeup line.

“He has almost five years of work, because we were in Rímel tests, from the lip.A whole range of natural products has been done with which you can create a day or night makeup, ”said the entrepreneur.

However, when I was close to completing the formulas, the pandemic arrived.“Botánikaha sense the hard blow of the pandemia, we are barely standing;However, since this project has five years of research, we had made the orders of all these inputs before the pandemic and in fact the pandemic has made us postpone the launch, ”said Mercado.

After raising some of the restrictions in the border areas, Lorgia had to travel to Lima (Peru) to bring the ingredient that had dispatched from Europe: the mica.

“These pigments do not exist in South America and we have to import them, but we have dedicated ourselves a lot to being free of labor exploitation, of all these exploitations to the environment.We have taken looking for a reliable provider and that meets these requirements, ”he said when explaining about the input he lacked.

"The micas have helped us to take the step for shadows, lipsticks and even the bases".In addition, he worked with compositions of vegetable butter such as cocoa, mango and carite, among others.

Along with the long wait of the ingredient, Market went through a bigger conflict: how to keep the business?The answer was not one, he recalled that he had to make many changes, from reducing production, facilitating purchase methods, boosting their social networks and dictating online workshops.

Already with the formulas made, Botanika had to meet another stage: the design of the line and the packaging.

Market recalls this process with nostalgia, because in their words "many people gathered to fulfill their dream".

"Ideal people have appeared.For example, for the brand image a very young girl appeared who makes some beautiful designs and just this line is directed to the youth audience, because she has vibrant colors and this illustrator makes drawings with fed up color and she did it ”.

The packaging was also developed from scratch, with the concept of reducing the maximum in waste by each wrapping.

“(We found) a printing press that makes designs with vegetable dyes, with less to greater quantity, with a person who was super attentive, who gave you solutions because in Botanika we want to reduce the use of waste waste from packaging the.Next to him we have made some practical packaging, ”he said.

For the presentation, the young entrepreneur brought together makeup artists and audiovisual producers.However, to cover this investment he had to engineer a strategy.

“Even if they don't believe it, we have worked with product exchange.That has helped me a lot, ”he said.

For market, with 200 Bolivians a person could be made of the complete makeup stands: eyeliner, shadows, lipstick, combing soap, blush.And it is that prices were another reasons why Botánika entered the market.

"The prices we manage have done it as with all the products to be as affordable as possible, so that everyone can acquire them".

He recalled that when he decided to use organic products, they were very expensive compared to the market price and opted to make their products accessible to motivate to use sustainable cosmetics.