INSPIRING TALES OF STARTUPS, GROWTH AND OVERCOMING HARDSHIPS

Initially, Yu Ming didn’ t exactly think of herself as an entrepreneur, but she has always been passionate about skin care.“ I graduated as a double English major from a university in Singapore and had two career paths— to be a teacher or a journalist. I chose to work in a women’ s magazine,” she says. It was during this time that she began her love for skin care and makeup.“ I got on like a house on fire with the [ girls working in the magazine’ s beauty department ] who showered me with loads of products from the beauty closet.”

By her account, she is an“ accidental” entrepreneur.“ Since it was difficult to find work in a women’ s magazine in Japan, my husband encouraged me to start a blog. It was a creative outlet for me to combine my two loves— writing and beauty. There was much to explore in Japan because the culture of beauty was so different from the rest of the world and it was a fascinating space,” she says.

Discovering a New Culture of Beauty While living in Tokyo, Yu Ming stumbled upon a Japanese beauty secret: collagen peptides. She began to casually sell a Japanese brand from her blog shop. When Oprah Winfrey featured the peptides on a segment called Beauty Secrets from Around the World, the orders started streaming in.

“ This made me realize that there was a nascent but growing demand in ingestible beauty products,” she says.“ I loved the Japanese brands I tried but there were always a few missing elements and that drove me to create a collagen product I want to consume every single day, so Sparkle Collagen was born.”

In terms of formulation, Yu Ming claims Sparkle Collagen’ s

BY KELLY HEITZ

YU MING AND DEREK O’ NEIL

Co-Founders • Sparkle Collagen Hawthorn, New York

formula is easy to understand.“ It has no sugar, contains hyaluronic acid for added moisturizing benefits and has lots of vitamin C,” she says.

Getting the Word Out But having an innovative product idea isn’ t the only ingredient for success. The co-founders had to work extremely hard to get the Sparkle Collagen name out in front of its target market and gain the trust of experts so they’ d recommend an unfamiliar product to their customers.“ The biggest challenge to date was building a brand from nothing and getting people to trust a new, unknown brand,” she says.“ We’ ve been building our brand by seeding Sparkle Collagen in the spa world. We place our products in the hands of skin-care experts, namely estheticians in spas who are trusted by their customers to make solid recommendations.”

This marketing concept essentially used word-of-mouth advertising to propel the brand nationally. It’ s the perfect fit for

62 PULSE ■ March / April 2017