When Samuel and I were married, I told him that I would not see myself to stay at home and waiting for the family monthly budget to manage, like most traditional wives do. I used to work at a company and humanitarian agencies. All those were tough jobs that I enjoyed. So, being ‘just’ at home and do ‘nothing’ sounds terrible for me. However, I had a moment to be at home and ‘did nothing’ after our marriage.
Married & Healthy Food
Outside of my hometown, I was a student or a worker. And I was just staying at my parents’ house when I am in town, in Indonesia. I have never had my own kitchen in the past. Being married is when I started to have found cooking and baking is a greatness. I started to fall in love with kitchen stuff. Every time I tried a new food recipe, every time Samuel praised me. Love was bouncing from all over the house.
A Home Business Owner
Shortly I nailed how to cook. Every day I become faster at cooking and baking without any recipes. So, I started doing some other ‘home’ projects, like sewing and crafting. I love crafting. Basically, I could do any kind of crafts on my own. But, crafting costs money. This is when I remembered that I still want to have a small business that I could manage simply at home. So, I could enjoy crafting at home and generate income to buy the ingredients to craft again. That was how I see it without any business plan.
Baby Plan & Healthy Skin Products
We heard from two sources that these friends were planning to get pregnant after over 10 years of marriage without a little one. Their doctors forbid them to never apply any products on their skin during their In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) period. I was surprised to hear this for the first time. Many questions popped into my mind. Because at the very same moment, we were also planning for a baby.
Living in Korea, where everything mostly not written in Latin, we have had difficulties finding the perfect products that fit our diet. Every time we went out shopping, we were having hard times to read ‘hangeul’ of the ingredient list on each product. Pork-less in a country where the majority of people eat pork. Food shopping frustrated me. I was irritated a lot.
In my mind… “if nothing I could change in the food industry as a maker, another industry should open”.
FridaSkincare: A Humble Beginning
Samuel and I, we did not do dating like many couples in love. We spent our romantic episodes making natural soaps, bath & body products, and a few skincare products, like cream, lotion, and butter to have a spa-like treatment at our home. We made them all in a little room in our house.
We love to stay inside our cozy home. Weather in Korea is one of the things we are not a big fan of. Besides, Korean Wave, like K-pop and K-dramas, Korea also have ‘Cold Wave’ and ‘Heat Wave’ in cold dry winter and hot rainy summer. Once a year, we are sprinkled with some yellow dust, just like icing sugar on top of the cake. We noticed that our skin was getting worse year after year living in Korea.
These all made us think that we could create our own complete line of skincare. That day, mid of 2012, we decided to throw away every single store-bought skincare, bath & body products we had at home. FridaSkincare’s idea was born.
Image Credits: Ksenya Drozd