Founded in 2015 by Mercy Wambui Kamara, Mercellar Ltd is a privately owned company. After 23 years of living in Denmark, deeply immersed in the university world pursuing an academic career, Ms Kamara took a life-changing decision to leave the world of academia and join the world of business.
After considering various business ideas and attending crash courses in business management and entreprenuership, Ms Kamara decided to take the first steps in her business journey. She took the beauty and skincare route. This business route was, in many ways, inspired and guided by her skincare experiences. Ms Kamara had struggled with adult acne for years, relentlessly searching for an effective solution, without success.
When she left Kenya for Denmark in 1992, she thought that prestige brands readily available in Denmark would solve her acne problems. Once in Denmark, she tried one skincare brand after another that promised to solve acne problems. She tried many. None helped. Desperate, she turned to concealing make-ups. At some point, she got tired of her dependence on concealing make-up. She consulted a skincare specialist who advised her to try a newly introduced dermatologist developed skincare, known as Exuviance, to see if it would help, before taking prescription acne medicine, which can be hard on and may dry the skin. Ms Kamara visited a beauty clinic in Copenhagen, which sold Exuviance products and offered Exuviance facial treatments. To her surprise, 3 months of Exuviance treatments and use visibly reduced her acne breakouts and cleared her blemishes. This was an incredible and transformative experience, after many years of struggle with acne.
As luck would have it, after an year, the owner of the beauty clinic informed Ms Kamara that she was about to close down her clinic, due to unavoidable circumstances. Desperate, Ms Kamara asked this owner what she was supposed to do. She recommended Ms Kamara to visit Tornebuskegade 1-3 in Copenhagen, the address of the distributor of Exuviance product line in Scandinavia, Health and Beauty Scandinavia (HBS). This was the beginning of a long friendship between Ms Kamara, Allan Søndergaard and Kennet Mesan, founders and owners of HBS. That was in 1998.
Since 1998, Ms Kamara observed how the Exuviance product line and treatments were introduced, slowly and surely, in Scandinavian beauty clinics. By 2015, more than a 1000 beauty clinics and spas in Scandinavia were offering Exuviance treatments.
On her several visits to Kenya, Ms Kamara would see many Kenyans with acne breakouts. On returning to Denmark, she would tell Allan, Ken, and her husband that she will soon introduce the Exuviance product line to Kenyans, to help them solve their acne problems, as she solved hers. This did not come to be, at least not right away. Ms Kamara had teachings to take care of, group projects to supervise, journal articles to write, or grants to apply for. She had little time for herself and her family, let alone for engaging in business. As a university academic who loved teaching, doing research; indeed, as a person who had internalized the academic worldview and mindset—and identified herself as an academic—the idea of leaving all that and start from the scratch in the world of business seemed like a part-time entertainment joke. The idea was no longer a joke, when the world of academia frustrated her efforts and denied her opportunities to make progress. She threw in the towel and left. They say in Denmark,“Intet er så skidt, at det ikke er godt for noget“ (nothing is so bad that it is not good for something else). Ms Kamara’s daily routine of Exuviance-sation gained new meaning. She set out to find if Exuviance had, since the last time she was in Kenya, been introduced to Kenyans. She surveyed the Kenyan health and beauty market. The result: the Exuviance brand had not been introduced to Kenyans, yet. Indeed, Kenya was not on NeoStrata’s list of countries where the Exuviance brand could be bought, outside US. It would be so wonderful and fulfilling, she thought, if I would help Kenyans discover the Exuviance brand?
Ms Kamara contacted NeoStrata, which challenged the management…”An academia with no business experience, living in Denmark…is seeking an exclusive distribution agreement for the Exuviance brand product line…in Kenya and East Africa? Does she know anything about skincare, about business start-up, about how tough and rough the world of business is for seasoned business people, let alone for a naive amateur…?”
These concerns are valid, Ms Kamara thought; but with passion, will power, hard work, an observed need for an effective acne solution in Kenya, a believe in myself and the effectiveness of Exuviance skincare solutions, I will step out and be brave with my dreams. She travelled to Kenya to undertake an in-depth field marketing research. She founded and registered Mercellar Ltd. She wrote a strategic marketing plan, which NeoStrata’s management considered to be the longest and most detailed they ever received. Ms Kamara explored skincare literature, took crash courses in beauty therapy, Exuviance training at HBS, and Exuviance product training in Paris. The rest, as they say, is history.