During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Bianca Brown, 27, started making skin-care products at home with her mother, experimenting with ingredients to create a product that would help with eczema. Four years later, Brown is the CEO of an all-natural skin-care business, SimplyB, with more than 1,000 orders for its homemade body butters, body scrubs, and lip glosses.
“My mom was like, ‘You can start a business with this,'” Brown says. “So I started selling little things to the local community and got my first few local orders. I eventually set up a website and it just took off from there.”
Shortly after launching her business, Brown’s work became a hot topic on TikTok, and she was flooded with orders. Initially, Brown described the situation as “stressful” because all of her products were made to order. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown was doing hybrid learning, both in person and at home, and she was juggling making her products at home with attending school.
The following year, when Brown was featured on 6abc News in Philadelphia, she was more prepared for an increase in orders.
“With TikTok, I was more prepared because I knew how to mass produce product,” Brown said. “That was definitely a lesson to learn, and it’s been really good because it’s helped me get a lot of the returning customers I have now.”
SimplyB’s products come in a variety of scents and themes. Some are dessert-inspired, like the Birthday Cake Foaming Body Scrub. Others are floral-inspired, like Brown’s personal favorite product, the Lily Blossom Body Butter.
Brown said it was important to her that her body butters and scrubs are all-natural, unlike the harmful chemical-laden skin care products she used before founding Simply B. Sourced from a third-party distributor, her body butter ingredients include shea butter, cocoa butter, almond oil and hemp seed oil. Her recipes have changed over the years and have been improved with time.
“It’s a lot of trial and error,” Brown says, “but we’ve done a lot of research into what the ratios should be and what the melting points of some of the products are.”
Brown’s commitment to natural ingredients is one aspect of her overall dedication to SimplyB and influenced her decision to attend St. Joe’s University. The university was close to her home in Delaware County, allowing Brown to work back home when needed.
“I felt like I had put a lot of time and energy into my business,” Brown said, “and when I went to college, I didn’t want to give it up.”
Similarly, Brown credits SimplyB with inspiring her to double major in Business Intelligence and Analytics (BIA) and Marketing. Her ultimate career goal is to become a full-time entrepreneur. Meanwhile, Brown says running a business has taught her about “saving and spending, risk and reward.” It’s also taught her practical life skills, like balancing responsibilities, since her role as CEO involves running social media accounts and answering emails in addition to physically building a product.
“Time management was a big thing to learn,” Brown says. “I was so passionate about school that I had to make some sacrifices. Like, ‘Hey guys, I can’t go to the mall today because I have to make stuff for my business.’ Some of my friends who run businesses didn’t really understand that, so it was hard for me to understand. But I learned a lot from going through it as a teenager.”
Brown said that during her first semester, she would often go home on weekends to restock her supplies. This year, she changed her strategy and made a lot of products over the summer, so she made fewer trips home.
Though Brown keeps her workspace at home, she has seen business opportunities on campus: Last year, she collaborated with SJU Naturals, an affinity group in the Center for Inclusion and Diversity that focuses on promoting wellness and a healthy self-image, on a campus vending event.
Brown said she was initially nervous about talking publicly about her business, unsure of how her colleagues would react, but she realized confidence was the key to success.
“If I hadn’t told them about my business, SJU Naturals would never have known to ask me to do a sales event,” Brown says. “They always say networking is important in business, but it really is.”
Events like the collaboration with SJU Naturals have allowed people on campus, like Sydney Jackson ’27, a friend at Brown, to try out SimplyB’s products.
“I sat down by the table and purchased the honey turmeric soap,” Jackson said, “and the peach body butter. I enjoyed using these products so much that I would buy from her again. They’re all natural and they left my skin feeling soft and hydrated, which is really important because I have dry skin.”
Stacey Vasquez, 27, another friend of Brown’s and a repeat buyer of her color-changing lip gloss, described Brown as “influential.”
“It’s really amazing to see how she’s growing her business,” Vasquez said, “and she does it all by herself with just a little help from her mom. She does a really good job with marketing and promotion, and her products are really good. I love that and it’s really inspiring to watch her go down this path.”
