When Zandra Cunningham nine, her father wouldn’t let her buy more lip balm because of the harmful skin-damaging chemicals found in it. So Zandra made her own. Almost a year later, in 2010, Zandra launched a brand called Azariah’s Innocence, and at age 10, sold her own lip balm and body shea butter at the local farmer’s market.
As business grew and the brand expanded, Zandra renamed her brand to Zandra Beauty. Her brand still would sell lip balm made with natural ingrediants, but now she would sell more things than lip balm and shea butter, such as make up remover and face washes. As Zandra puts it, the brand motto is “No icky stuff!”
Now at age 21, Zandra has a net worth of $500,000. Her brand has expanded to making over 40 natural skincare products, all of which are not tested on animals. Not only did Zandra win awards such as the Etsy Open Call Golden PO, BE Teenpreneur of the year nominee (2016), and Small Business Administration Youth Entrepreneur of the year (2017), but she has also been featured on talk shows and other channels such as Nickelodeon.
A few words of advice Zandra has given are “be confident” and “networking is key.” The reason why Zandra’s story is inspirational is because of how young she was when she started her business, yet she wasn’t afraid of conquering the world with her skincare products. Zandra’s attitude is part of why she is such a successful entrepreneur. You can’t be afraid to change the world.
Zandra showed strong qualities on an entrepreneur at a young age. She recognized a problem, found a new niche, and created a new business idea. It is cool how her little business helped develop her high net worth and it also became a large make up company. I like how she gives the advice of having good networking, that is very important today in modern business!
I think it is so neat how Zandra took a small passion of hers, from such a young age, and turned it into a successful company. Zandra is a great example of a millennial entrepreneur because she displayed: passion, drive, creativity and great innovation. Her story shows how even very young children can have small ideas that can develop into something even greater.