Africa-Press – Lesotho. Relebohile Tapole is a 16 year old Managing Director (MD) of Epiphany Nail bar and Cosmetics from Maseru district and will be completing her Form E this year at
New Millennium High School. Epiphany Nail Bar and Cosmetics was launched in October 2020 and it produces Epiphany hand creams and lip balms products. Tapole says having a mother who is involved in
beauty industry and owns a beauty spa business which deals with treating people’s skin problems that require products for treatment, she saw a business
opportunity out of her mother’s spa and that was when she thought of inventing Epiphany products. Tapole said during the Covid-19 induced hard lockdown last year, she conducted researches on what she will need to come up
with for her products and looked at different formulas for everything needed and how it is done. “I remember one day mixing different ingredients and testing them on my mother who also had an input on how to improve my products,”
she said. Thrilled by her success, she said she is very excited with the exposure that her products now have because for her in the first place, it was
not really a business but it was just an experiment that she generated, testing if it will work or not “and it sure did”. She further said she drew passion
from this business because she learnt when she had already ventured into it that it is a long term investment. She positively said as time goes on, the business is going to generate more income for her.
At the age of 16, Tapole had an opportunity to have a very business oriented mother as she saw her sets standards very high for her spa and she always told
her that she needs to become better than she is now. “Truth is throughout my childhood, I always knew that I was destined to do big things though I did not
expect to venture into business at the age of 16. But it happened and I really appreciate it regardless of how difficult it has been,” she said. Tapole said
having to balance her school work with business has been really hard because both business and school need hard work but with God by her side, everything
seemed easier. She said she has always tried to separate her school work from her business and has been able to do that through the support from her family,
especially her mother. She said what separates her products from other existing products is that, “Epiphany hand creams are enthused with essential oils, they
give extra moisture, affordable, portable and are rooted on the word of God”. She said the challenges she encountered during the process are of finances as she had to
finance them from the money she makes from her side hustles. She said finding investors for her products has been really challenging and she does not have
much social media publicity which is something that hinders her business to really grow to the potential it has. “Introducing my business in the midst of
Covid-19 has also been a great challenge, however, it is the advent of the pandemic that made it possible,” she countered. She said Covid-19 has taught
her that in business, one does not have to sell or do seasonal products and has to learn ways that will sustain the business all year around. She said for
her, as much as it was like the worst time to generally be alive in her teenage years, the pandemic also gave her a chance to work on her first book which she
just published. Not only is she a business woman but also an author. Towards the end of March this year, she launched a book called Pride Before a Fall.
The book is a combination of poems that are based on the experiences that she had from the start of her teenage years. She said it is basically a motivation to
other teenagers, for them to know that as much as some of the teenage experiences may seem unbearable and nobody seems to understand, they should never feel alone.
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