Six years ago, Malis­sa Pat­ter­son, the head mix­tress of Scrump­tious Or­gan­ic Care, had a co­nun­drum.

For a very long time, she could not find an ex­ter­nal so­lu­tion to her con­cerns, so she went out and found her own.

“I ex­pe­ri­enced ex­treme­ly dry skin, pso­ri­a­sis as well as ac­ne, and I felt that noth­ing was work­ing when I went to the phar­ma­cy. I was tired of it, so I did my own re­search. And I dis­cov­ered that the prod­ucts that I start­ed to mix cleared up my skin a lot. And then oth­er peo­ple no­ticed,” said Pat­ter­son on the birth of her busi­ness fol­low­ing some prod­ding from oth­ers to not on­ly sell her mix­tures but to reg­is­ter the brand.

“Now I help peo­ple like my­self who have eczema, pso­ri­a­sis, ac­ne, fall­en hair as well be­cause the aim is to re­al­ly take peo­ple on a jour­ney to skin and hair con­fi­dence so they have one less thing to be con­cerned about,” said Pat­ter­son, who ex­pand­ed her prod­uct line to cov­er is­sues such as skin dis­coloura­tion and bald spot treat­ments.

Scrump­tious Or­gan­ic Care’s prod­uct line range in­cludes oats, turmer­ic and es­sen­tial oil cleans­ing face masks, hair oils, foot scrubs, body but­ters, sooth­ing face scrubs and hy­drat­ing body oils, re­ju­ve­nat­ing face masks and dai­ly fa­cial mois­turis­ers.

She said, “From us­ing my prod­uct they no longer feel the need to cov­er up them­selves. You need to just feel more con­fi­dent in your­self and your skin. You don’t want to walk around the place just won­der­ing if any­body is look­ing at your skin or your hair all the time. You want to just leave the house and go about your busi­ness.”

But as was the case for many small busi­ness­es, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic proved a chal­lenge for Pat­ter­son and her brand.

She had pre­vi­ous­ly leaned on ap­pear­ances at mar­kets and pop-up events to gar­ner sales and new cus­tomers.

But with the var­i­ous re­stric­tions, that op­tion had been shut off.

“In 2020, every­body was sent in­side. So pre­vi­ous­ly I would have fre­quent­ed the mar­kets but mar­kets by them­selves are not sus­tain­able. That’s not a sus­tain­able thing. To just be float­ing around mar­kets, then you are forced to see well if these mar­kets are no longer in ex­is­tence, how do I pay my bills? How do I put gas in my car?” she said.

This co­nun­drum prompt­ed her to search for an­oth­er so­lu­tion and she opt­ed to boost her on­line pres­ence.

“I al­ready had plat­forms on so­cial me­dia of course, but I ac­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to be a lit­tle more vig­or­ous about those so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

“So I en­gage oth­er en­tre­pre­neurs who were al­so on­line and en­cour­aged them as well, to mon­e­tise their mar­ket­ing as you can’t just go on­line to en­gage with the cus­tomers be­cause what hap­pens is that if you don’t keep up with the on­line pres­ence or your email mar­ket­ing, then peo­ple move on to the next per­son that’s just how it is,” she said as she ex­plained that a few on­line sup­port ses­sions al­so helped so­lid­i­fy her ap­proach.

But the turn­ing point came when she held an on­line an­niver­sary event and tru­ly saw the reach of the net­work­ing with­in the event.

She said the event proved to be ex­cep­tion­al­ly em­pow­er­ing as it fea­tured quite a num­ber of oth­er tal­ent­ed, no­table lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and busi­ness spon­sor­ship part­ners.

“As an en­tre­pre­neur, I have learnt to piv­ot and cre­ate on­line spaces for my brand to be sus­tain­able,” said Pat­ter­son, who ex­plained that at times it felt that her busi­ness did not seem like it had got­ten trac­tion, but there was still an el­e­ment of word of mouth even with so­cial me­dia threads.

“Now peo­ple see you. For ex­am­ple, I went to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage and a lot of them, quite a few of them came to the booth look­ing for me specif­i­cal­ly be­cause they saw me on­line, they saw my work on Face­book, on In­sta­gram, and I don’t know these peo­ple or who would have shared it with them, but they de­lib­er­ate­ly came look­ing for me,” she said.

“I would say be­ing on­line has giv­en me a new clien­tele so that I have to main­tain those not just through the on­line plat­forms, but through email mar­ket­ing as well.”

Pat­ter­son ad­mit­ted that push­ing on with her on­line pres­ence took her out of her com­fort zone in terms of do­ing con­stant up­dates and the oc­ca­sion­al live video broad­cast or col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ties, even in­vest­ing in a life coach to help over­come her anx­i­eties, but she said the pay off in terms of ex­pand­ing her client base was worth it.

“From there, I re­alised that on­line re­al­ly helped push a lot. I would have been an ex­hibitor at the Agri-in­vest­ment In­vest­ment Fo­rum and then some­one else ap­proached me to do a video on my­self as well.

“So, it is just over­com­ing your­self, mak­ing an in­vest­ment, and trust­ing peo­ple who were more fa­mil­iar with the on­line mar­ket­ing plat­form. Even though you think you are, there’s al­ways some­body who knows more,” she said.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing may boost in­ter­est, but at the end of the day up­hold­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice re­mained key to ex­pand­ing your client base.

“I just keep fol­low­ing up. Be­cause you don’t al­ways have to get new cus­tomers every sin­gle day what you have to do is main­tain what you have and then they will tell some­body else be­cause word of mouth is king, re­gard­less of any­thing else, re­gard­less of rec­om­men­da­tion will win every day in my opin­ion, be­cause it could make or break a busi­ness,” said Pat­ter­son.

She said the suc­cess of her so­cial me­dia strat­e­gy has led to her sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing her ap­pear­ances at pop-up mar­kets, as she in­stead fo­cus­es on build­ing her brand on­line while us­ing the odd oc­ca­sion at such events as a mar­ket­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty as op­posed to a rev­enue earn­er.