{"id":1806,"date":"2021-02-26T18:42:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T23:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2024-02-13T11:50:44","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T16:50:44","slug":"felicita-ovadje-lawyer-turned-beauty-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/blog\/felicita-ovadje-lawyer-turned-beauty-entrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"Felicita Ovadje: Lawyer-turned-beauty entrepreneur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Felicita Ovadje describes herself as the artsy one in a family of overachievers. When the founder of Felicheeta Artistry<\/a> was plugging her way through her final year of law school, she found herself in desperate need of a creative outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was having a really hard time emotionally,\u201d Ovadje recalls. \u201cAll I wanted to do was paint and draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found herself drawn to the world of beauty, but not one to throw herself into anything without research, she started exploring potential ventures and educational programs.<\/p>\n

She came across the story of Tara Fela-Durotoye, a lawyer-turned-beauty entrepreneur who operates 20 stores across Africa. \u201cI was really inspired,\u201d Ovadje says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know where this journey is going to\u00a0 lead me, but I want to keep exploring.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ovadje squeezed beauty school into the month before graduation, then began freelancing as a makeup artist on the side as her law career progressed (she still family law to this day).<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was freelancing, I noticed that we didn\u2019t have a lot of products that really catered to the way Black women do their makeup,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That went for local makeup artists, too: \u201cI hired an assistant, a new grad from beauty school, and she couldn\u2019t do women of colour. We went to work on someone, and she was shaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gradually, she realized there was a gap in the market. \u201cThere were a lot of Black-owned brands, but they weren\u2019t mainstream – everyone\u2019s kind of selling from their website.\u201d A central distribution channel,\u00a0 she realized, could go a long way.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlus, as an immigrant myself, I realized a lot of people were moving here. I\u2019m using a foundation from back home, but here, how easy is it for people to get it?\u201d<\/p>\n

While exploring avenues for launching a business, she came across Futurpreneur and applied for the program in 2019. \u201cFuturpreneur came in when I was going to convert from freelance to retail, because I definitely wanted that mentorship and that guidance. It\u2019s one thing to have good ideas in your head, but it\u2019s another to have the tools and resources to effectively execute these ideas. That was one of the things I really wanted from Futurpreneur \u2013 help to execute my ideas, go above and beyond.\u201d The staff she worked with were \u201cinstrumental, very encouraging, very supportive,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Just a year or so later, Felicheeta Artistry opened its first brick-and-mortar location in Winnipeg\u2019s Grant Park Shopping Centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how it\u2019s grown since last year,\u201d Ovadje says. \u201cYou know, there\u2019s the regular, modest thing to do \u2013 first we start online, then popups, then maybe after a year, we open a store. But as I started the journey, the opportunities that just dropped in my lap led us to do everything we planned to do in a four-year plan immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a believer in, when the opportunities show themselves, taking advantage of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The physical location of launched in September 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. That might seem like a potentially fraught time to open a storefront, but Ovadje says having the shop has been a useful complement to online sales: \u201cWith the type of business I run \u2013 if people are unfamiliar with a product, they\u2019ll seek it in person,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, much of Felicheeta\u2019s programming has moved online. Currently, Ovadje is developing a class with a local beauty school, teaching students how to not only apply products on different skin tones, but how to work with products that are formulated for women of colour.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur skin soaks up a lot of colour, so most brands owned by people of colour are thicker in consistency for that reason,\u201d Ovadje explains. On top of that, brands from different parts of the world are often formulated to stay put all day, even in warmer climates, and tend to cater to local consumers\u2019 demands for a more full-coverage, done-up look.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was used to using products formulated lighter and building them up \u2013 but with these, a little goes a long way,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was just one thing to bring in brands \u2013 but my goal was also to teach people how to use those brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the product side, Ovadje says she particularly likes to stock companies that make culture central to their brands: for example, Hegai & Esther<\/a>\u2019s products include descriptions of sites and attractions in Nigeria, while Felicheeta also stocks palettes named after important historical and cultural figures. It\u2019s a way of keeping far-flung people connected to their culture, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we look for brands that aren\u2019t very superficial \u2013 they have a lot more than makeup to give to their audience. \u2026 I guess that\u2019s the geek in me \u2013 that education component. I believe that when you learn, you teach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between running and promoting a retail brand, developing educational programming and continuing a law career, there are a lot of demands on Ovadje\u2019s time \u2013 but she seems to take it all in stride.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is, when you\u2019re so passionate about what you\u2019re doing, you never feel like you\u2019re working,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause I feel like I haven\u2019t reached my end goal, or the project isn\u2019t complete, it feels like, \u2018Did I even work today?\u2019 But that\u2019s because I enjoy the process, whether I\u2019m working on a client file, setting up the store, marketing, planning–all those things. It never really feels like work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m not chasing money at this point. I\u2019m chasing impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to learn how Futurpreneur can help launch your small business? Click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Felicita Ovadje describes herself as the artsy one in a family of overachievers. When the founder of Felicheeta Artistry was plugging her way through her final year of law school, she found herself in desperate need of a creative outlet. \u201cI was having a really hard time emotionally,\u201d Ovadje recalls. \u201cAll I wanted to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneurship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}