NEW LIFE:A windsurfing injury and dry scalp caused Leila Bendali to research alternative health and set up her own business selling irritant-free beauty products, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL
WHEN LEILA Bendali’s boyfriend goes to the kitchen cupboard, he is as likely to meet a bottle of organic shampoo as he is a bag of sugar. Finding space to store stock has been one of the biggest challenges for Bendali, who set up and runs a website selling irritant-free beauty and personal care products.
It’s a departure from her career in the chemicals industry, where she spent years working for pharmaceutical giants. But being her own boss is ample reward for the long hours and storage issues, she says.
Growing up in Montenotte in Cork city, there were few early signs that she would take this path. “I had quite an ordinary upbringing, my parents wouldn’t have been particularly health conscious themselves,” she recalls.
When the time came to choose a career, Bendali took the lead from her Algerian father and went into engineering. She particularly liked chemistry and a degree in chemical engineering would bring plenty of job offers, she explains.
After she graduated, Bendali worked with heavy-hitters such as Pfizer, Eli-Lilly and Wyeth, making sure new production facilities complied with regulations. But after a while the job lost its gloss.
“I was getting a little restless so I decided to take a break and travel for six months,” she says, outlining her itinerary around South America, where she built up her Spanish language skills while having fun.
“It started with surfing in Costa Rica, then I went to Venezuela and learned to windsurf and then in Argentina I began to do some work with children.”
The trip expanded her horizons, but when she came home a windsurfing injury to her back led her down the route of alternative health, she explains. “I started looking into various options on how to sort it out; everything from Bowen technique to reflexology and osteopathy.”
With her interest piqued, she started to study other alternative approaches such as massage therapy, followed by aromatherapy and beauty therapy.
And when she found that a particular brand of shampoo gave her a flaky scalp, her background training in chemistry made her begin to question what was in the products. “I started thinking about what I was putting on my skin and hair and on my face and near my mouth and I got a bit concerned at that point,” she says.
So Bendali started to read up on controversial chemicals used in mainstream beauty products, such as mineral oils, parabens, synthetic colours and fragrances. “I spent so long researching it I became the expert among my friends who would ask me about what they could try for skin problems,” she says. “So I asked myself how I could put this into practice.”
Her answer was to start selling products that avoid potential irritants. “My plan was originally to open a bricks and mortar shop, but in retrospect, very thankfully it didn’t work out for me,” she says.
“I don’t think it’s quite the time for bricks and mortar and I realised that online retail is really picking up. I found I had to order a lot of the products I wanted online, it’s very hard to locate some of the stuff in Ireland.”
A web development course with the Dublin City Enterprise Board and conversations with friends gave Bendali some direction in how to get the website just right.
“I did a lot of market research. My friends often buy things online so I had good opinions on what works and what doesn’t,” she says. “It meant I could put together a pretty comprehensive spec on what I wanted.”
She now runs the online shop, Safia Organics, from her Dublin home.
“It’s a big change to go from working in a multinational company to sitting in your bedroom by yourself every day – if your printer goes down you have to fix it, you can’t just ring somebody else to do it,” she says.
“But what I find most rewarding is working for myself, it’s something I have always wanted to do. I’m happy to be working until one o’clock in the morning when I’m doing it for me. And I like working with the products because a lot of the companies have an interesting ethos, like capping the salaries of their executives or doing a lot of environmental work.”
And the work is anything but monotonous, she adds. “At the moment I am very, very busy but that’s a good complaint to have.
“I could be doing anything on a given day with the business, from tracking parcels or meeting a new distributor to finding out about products, meeting the web designer, updating the site myself or writing press releases. So it’s a really varied day but that’s what I enjoy about it.”
safiaorganics.ie