Name: Nina Ellaine Dizon-Cabrera
She is the founder of Niv Della Beauty Innovations Inc.,
which currently owns the brands Colourette, and Every
Body
She enjoyed selling items from an early age, and when
she was 6-7 years old, she began selling polvorons made
by her mother. She'd sell them for Php1 and keep the
entire amount. She used to buy Pokémon cards and Pokémon organizers when she was
in third grade, and she could buy them for Php50 and would sell them for Php100. With
the money she earns, she buys stickers, ballpens, beads, and nylons, and she makes
bracelets to sell from the beads and nylons. She also printed and photocopied song lyrics
and sold them for Php1 a page. When she graduated from high school, she noticed
Facebook shops with unappealing logos and realized she can offer her skills since she
knows some basic Photoshop. She started an online shop called Barcodes and Logos,
where she charged Php20 for logos, banners, posters, and graphic icons. When demand
increased, she hiked the price from Php20 to Php25. During college she realized she
gained weight when her nursing uniform for school became tight for her, she became
insecure and began searching for slimming pills. She took them and slimmed down;
others who knew her were curious about how she dropped weight, so she understood
this was yet another profitable venture. She would buy boxes for 250 pesos each and sell
them for 300 pesos. She got to the point where a lot of people were asking her for the
slimming pills, so she informed her friends that if they could sell them, she'd give them a
Php50 commission. She created a Facebook page for the slimming pills, which she
discovered was the first for this product, despite the fact that it was in the market for years.
She sought out a different supplier with whom she could do consignment; they began with
20 boxes and progressed to 200 boxes. Despite the fact that her slimming pills business
was growing, she couldn't afford to pay her tuition fees at the moment, so when her
mother told her she needed to stop schooling for a while due to a lack of funds, she did
so and focused only on her business. When she discovered her sales were dwindling,
she devised a promotion in which she would give away a freebie to anyone who
purchased a one-month program of the slimming pills. She got scrap soaps for Php6 and
gave them away as a freebie. What shocked her was that the folks she gave freebies to
adored the soap and frequently inquired about where they might purchase it. So, in 2013,
she launched an Instagram business called Fairness and Flawless and sold the soaps
separately. She was now solely selling slimming pills and soaps throughout this time. She
eventually ran into a difficulty with soap inventory, as she wouldn't be able to receive any
scrap soaps if the supplier didn't have any orders. So she approached the factory owner
and requested if she could produce her own soaps, which the owner was surprised to
hear because no other scrap soap buyer had ever dared to do so. They discussed and
began working on her own soap formula. She had roughly Php20,000-30,000 in savings
at the time and used it to invest in Fairness and Flawless. Fairness and Flawless had
dealers and resellers of their face sets, peeling oils, lotions, and other products that they
had. On the second year, she decided to add a cosmetic line for Fairness and Flawless.
So they created five colors and named them colorsticks, and the brand was called
Colourette by Fairness and Flawless. Because the colorsticks were so popular, more
shades were created, and Colourette soon outgrew Fairness and Flawless. She found
her personal advocacies in Colourette, such as self-love, self-empowerment, acceptance,
and diversity. She recognized she had to close Fairness and Flawless owing to her new
beliefs, and she chose not to bank on other people's insecurities any longer, which is in
line with her current advocacies. During 2019, they created a new brand called Fresh
Formula which was a skincare brand that helps improve your skin without changing what
you looked like. But at the end of 2021 Nina chose to close it, so they can focus more on
the growth of Colourette. As a plus size woman herself, she knows the struggles of liking
the clothing garment but finding out it’s not available in her size so in December 2021 she
released every body. Every body has 10 sizes ranging from 2XS to 5XL.
Her beliefs and story is inspiring, and as a fellow Filipino woman, I can relate to her
insecurities during her teen years due to the Philippines' beauty standards. How brands
teach us what beauty is, what it should be, and how it should seem, despite the fact that
the standards are a long way from what our Filipino faces and skin should look like. I can
connect to her feelings of inadequacy since it's often difficult to give yourself the love you
deserve, especially when your surroundings tell you otherwise.