My husband and I started making products in our kitchen to solve our families dry skin problems. Both our boys had very dry and eczema prone skin and we found shea butter to be the ultimate healing balm. Our formulation skills evolved beyond healing to creating clean and effective beauty products for the hair, body and skin using shea butter as the key ingredient.
Shea butter is an integral part of the Shea Radiance brand. We source our shea butter directly from women run cooperatives in West Africa. We provide economic access that allows women to feed clothe and educate their children
We exist to have a positive and meaningful impact in the world, specifically in the lives of women. Everything we have done up to this point, our successes and challenges are connected to our higher purpose which is to impact lives.
-Funlayo Alabi, Co-Founder of Shea Radiance
We believe that when a woman feels beautiful she can focus her creative energies on changing her world. At Shea Radiance we want to influence the way you care for yourself and others by creating products that make you feel beautiful, nurtured and powerful.
Our journey began while seeking a natural solution to our boys’ dry & eczema prone skin. We re-discovered Shea butter, a natural healing balm sourced from the Shea fields in West Africa. Our interest in the efficacy and sustainability of Shea butter led us back to West Africa where we developed a relationship with the women Shea producers.
The mark of a truly great product is the ingredient list. Like food, your skin products should be formulated with ingredients that are wholesome and nutritious, free of unnecessary additives and fillers. Pure, simple and effective ingredients like shea butter, rice bran oil and oatmeal are the foundation of really great moisturizers to help soothe dry and inflamed. If your skin needs long lasting nourishing moisture, we have just he right solution for you
Sustainable Supply Chain
The higher percentage of Shea butter in our products also means that we purchase more Shea butter which brings more money to women and their communities. This enables women to gain economic power and change the lives of those around her forever.
Transforming Communities – Shea Radiance Sustainability Projects
2015 -2016 Shea Health & Safety Project
March 2013 – Thinking Global, Acting Local Abuja, Nigeria
In March of 2013, we trained more than 300 small businesses to Think Global and Act Local through a selection of workshops including soap making, formulation, access to finance, business plan development, and marketing. Shea butter is an incredible gift to women on so many levels – from the Shea producer in the village, to the small business owner who manufactures products for the local market.
2010 – 2012 Beginning of Strategic Collaborations
I met Petra Jacobi, GIZ Program Director for Nigeria, on a long bus ride from Bamako the capital city of Mali to the Shea producing communities in March 2010. We discussed the issue of poverty among women in rural communities especially in the Shea sector. By the time we were heading back to town we had talked about the possibilities of a partnership between GIZ and the Shea Radiance brand that would be focused on alleviating poverty in a selected group of communities in Northern Nigeria.
In November 2011, my husband and I formally met with the GIZ team at their office in Abuja Nigeria and mutually agreed to enter into partnership with the following objective “To help local Shea processors improve income through consistent butter production, marketing and sale and as a result become competent partners in an improved Shea value chain for export and domestic markets”. Our initial intervention was focused on six communities in Bosso Local Government areas of Niger State, Nigeria and we later opened it up to eight communities.
Values We Live and Craft By
1. We All Play a Role in the Global Legacy of Womanhood.
Inspired by the African village concept of community, the shared experiences of women and mothers and the desire to feel empowered, independent, and proud is universal. We all play a role in shaping that for the better. At Shea Radiance, we choose to positively affect that global legacy of womanhood through beauty.
2. Uncompromised Artisanship.
Every Shea Radiance creation begins with our key ingredient. Sourced from women-run cooperatives in West Africa, our artisan partners produce the purest grade and highest quality Shea butter. Our team of mixologists blends complementary ingredients into each product in small batches to ensure that the quality of our collections are as uncompromised as our selection of each artisan partner across seas.
3. Universal Needs Fulfillment.
Your needs, hers, and ours are all fulfilled with one key ingredient - Shea butter. The needs of our founding team to make better the economic status of women Shea producers in West Africa is met through our cross-cultural supply chain. The needs of our customers to heal their hair and skin is fulfilled through our natural and effective formulations. The need to connect women globally, and the need to create an economic pathway for over 16 million African women picking and processing Shea nuts to care and provide for their families is what the Shea Radiance family aims to fulfill.