Creating a more
conscious future
“I found myself living at a shelter when I was 21 years old. I had
a laptop and $15”
Brandi Leifso, the founder and CEO of Evio Beauty is a poster
girl for the potential in the CBD industry. Brandi started her
brand whilst staying at a women’s shelter. At the time, she had
$15 and a laptop to her name.
Speaking on day one of the conference to a packed room, Brandi
said the scope for hemp and CBD in the beauty industry in particular
is massive, as she relayed her personal story, and its parallels
with the industry.
“When I was 14, I dropped out of school. I had a very colourful
upbringing, so I did not have a traditional education at all. When
I was 14, I made it onto the junior Olympic team, I was a
competitive ice dancer. That was why I dropped out of school,
because I thought I was going to be Belle from Beauty and the
Beast on Disney on Ice. My career has taken a big change. That
led me to experiencing the stigma of growing up in a colourful
home. Seventy percent of children who grow up in homes like
that often end up continuing that type of relationship onto their
adulthood. My life changed so drastically, I was sure that was
not what my life was going to look like. But, I found myself living
at a shelter when I was 21 years old. While I was there, I had
a laptop and $15 and so I went on Google to look at make-
up. I found a tonne of white labelled products that had very
traditional packaging. I put them in photoshop and put my own
logo on them.
I was able to make enough pre-sales to not only get my
own apartment, to get back on my own two feet, but to actually
bootstrap a company. I was able to bring it from a place of
literally nothing with products that didn’t exists to create
products and pre-sell 277,000 pieces in 2017. That led us to a
space in which the world’s largest skincare manufacturer invested
in Evio, and from there we continually grew the company. We
were partially acquired by Aurora and became their beauty arm.
There is a lot of strategy to that. Although I don’t have your
traditional education, something we are all familiar with is
breaking stigmas. That’s something I am super passionate about.
If we can break more stigmas, we can create a more conscious
future.”
VAPOUROUND CBD MAGAZINE
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