Silk Road Wellness has hit a purple patch.
Thanks to success in a pair of recent startup competitions, the Rosemount-based halal-certified skincare company is planning to build out its e-commerce platform and hire a public relations firm, with the goal of scaling into its own warehouse space.
In July, Annie Qaiser won the most funding — $40,000 — through the Get Down to Business Accelerator program, a Shark Tank-style entrepreneur event held at this year's 3M Open as a partnership between Minneapolis-based Get Down Coffee Co. and St. Paul-based Neighborhood Development Center.
Then, in August, Silk Road Wellness was named one of three finalists in the general division of the Minnesota Cup, the University of Minnesota's annual startup competition.
These achievements have not only garnered more publicity for Qaiser's business, but have also provided her funds to build out Silk Road's operations.
Qaiser came to the U.S. from Pakistan when she was in elementary school. She and her husband currently make, package and ship all Silk Road Wellness products, from deodorants to face masks to lotions, at their home.
Some of Silk Road's sales come online through its e-commerce platform. However, over the past several months, Qaiser has seen an influx of orders from local co-ops, markets and boutiques that carry Silk Road's products.
Silk Road's halal-certified beauty supplies sell well in these stores, and because of that she's projecting a sales split of 60% wholesale and 40% e-commerce for the rest of this year. Qaiser wants to use new funding and growing profits to expand into a small warehouse space to make room for more production and new employees, although she hasn't yet identified a location.
Developing Silk Road's niche in the Twin Cities skincare market will come from more marketing, another expansion goal of Qaiser's.
"In an over-saturated market, it's something completely new and fresh," Qaiser said about Silk Road's halal-certified beauty products.
Silk Road earned halal certification in 2019, a couple of months after the company launched earlier in the same year. Halal certification is granted to businesses that make products free from ingredients considered impure under Islamic tradition.
The certification process was quite rigorous for Silk Road Wellness. An agency in Chicago traced every ingredient used to make all of Silk Road's beauty products, Qaiser said.
But for Qaiser, halal is about more than pure ingredients. Qaiser thinks of halal as "fair and ethical treatment of everything," from disposal of waste created in production to where Silk Road sources its ingredients — mostly form local suppliers, Qaiser said.
"Halal is a universal term," Qaiser said. "Rather than having the clean stamp on your beauty products, or organic, or natural, our idea is to have halal symbolize all of those things."
Qaiser, a 2021 Business Journal Women in Business honoree, is currently focused on the Minnesota Cup. She could earn $25,000 if Silk Road Wellness wins the general division and another $50,000 if the business is named the competition's grand prize winner at a reception Sept. 19.
Even if Silk Road Wellness comes up short in the Minnesota Cup, Qaiser's business will continue to fill a need in the Twin Cities beauty market, she said.
"As an immigrant businessperson, it's amazing to be at this stage and break a lot of stereotypes that are set for Muslims or for women or for Pakistanis," Qaiser said. "That in and of itself has been a gratifying experience, and we're hoping to keep moving up."
