By: Staff Writer
August 16, 2022
A female Bahamian entrepreneur based in St Louis is eyeing Caribbean expansion as the market is “untapped”
Candera Thompson, chief executive officer of Bask & Bloom Essentials, based in St Louis, US, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that the brand is growing exponentially to the point where she is eyeing seven figure growth for 2023.
The Bahamian born Thompson, also said: “Things are going really well, especially seeing we have a lot of Caribbean backing and that was the whole inspiration behind the brand being from The Bahamas. So we’ve been doing really well with our online orders and we are branching out into other retail stores and beauty supply stores and things like that, so hopefully that picks up and not hindering us anymore.”
She added: “There’s so much opportunities in the Caribbean when it comes to hair care. There’s so much that we have to unlearn, there is still a huge part of the market that still uses relaxers and we want to provide more education to them. I believe that because it’s really an untapped market I feel we can have great success in the Caribbean now.”
Bask & Bloom is featured in stores all across the US and the UK and is building a firm following of people that love the products Ms Thompson is offering for women of colour.
Candera also said: “We’ve been working with influencers and brand ambassadors that are like All throughout the Caribbean. Like I said, the UK and Canada are top countries for us. So we’ve been, we’ve been getting a lot of love.
“Now we really just want to branch out, provide more education on healthy hair care and give them more access to the products when they need it.”
The passion for healthy hair care started when Candera suffered postpartum hair loss after the births of her two daughters, aged 12 and 7, with the birth of the younger one being the last straw. She then ventured out to find a solution and found how many other women were suffering from the same problem as she was.
A former marketing executive, Candera started working on finding a product to promote to women in need just like here. That’s when Bask & Bloom came alive some eight years ago and has been growing ever since. The blessing of being a mother and an entrepreneur is not lost on Candera either. ““It’s a great thing because you’re motivating so many people that didn’t know that you can be a mom, a wife, have three kids and still run a business full time. So standing out in the beauty space particularly in the Caribbean is motivating as a lot of people can actually see they can do something like this and succeed.”