Plantea Skin founder Helena Oseguera offered advice for young Latinx entrepreneurs of the SMU Latinx Fashion Leadership Council on Oct. 17 in the Underwood Law Library.
SMU LXFLC hosted the event as their summit for Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sept.15 to Oct 15.
The event provided an opportunity to ask Oseguera questions about her success story and offered a giveaway of Plantea products at the close of the Q&A session.
Plantea Skin, named for a mispronunciation of the Latin name for the skincare line’s main plant ingredient, cactus, was developed by Oseguera to help combat her mother’s rosacea.
In the early days of the development of her business, Oseguera identified a need in the industry and sought to fill it with her innovation.
“There’s a lot of amazing companies out there that I look up to very much skincare companies but I saw there was a huge gap when it came to the amount of acids they played with,” Oseguera said.
Oseguera explained how she came to be a successful businesswoman as a Latina with both Mexican and Swedish heritage. In business deals, Oseguera found knowing how to speak multiple languages came to her advantage.
“If you’re very culturally diverse and you’re very and your knowledge is very similar in multiple cultures, so you will understand a customer at a very wide range,” Oseguera said.
A diverse and rich heritage seems to be Oseguera’s superpower when it comes to her entrepreneurship.
“Being able to go back and forth between different cultures opens a lot of doors, and I think being different is super cool,” Oseguera said.
Oseguera also addressed the many challenges that come with founding her own business.
“When building a company from scratch you have so many doubts. How am I going to do this? How am I going to finance this? Are people going to buy it? Is this product going to work?” Oseguera said.
Being a young female entrepreneur comes with many setbacks, Oseguera told the audience. Surrounding yourself with good people and good advice helps, she added.
“You’re going to have a lot of times where you’re testing and a lot a lot of things are going to be going wrong,” she said. Having a solid team around her was critical to her success, she added.
