Sabrina Doerr Elba talks business growth, new product launches, and okra

London — Sabrina and Idris Elba gave guests a taste of the latest launch from their beauty brand, S’able Labs, on Tuesday night.

The couple hosted an intimate dinner at Ixchel, a newly opened Mexican restaurant on London’s King’s Road. There, the menu was a fusion of African and Mexican cuisine, with dishes made with special ingredients. Okra face serum.

The specially selected menu included a trout tostade. Okra tempura served with macho sauce and herb salad. A selection of birriosuya wrapped in banana leaves, served with roasted banana and corn ice cream and buñuelo for dessert.

“I’m East African and Idris is West African, so they have completely different concepts of okra and how it’s used in cooking. When I got married, my mother-in-law said, ‘This okra… If you don’t make the stew right, this won’t happen,”’ Sabrina Elba joked.

“Okra plays an important role.” [of my life] And culture. As a brand, we strive to highlight the beauty of the strength of African plants,” she added.

The unscented serum aims to attack hyperpigmentation, soothe inflammation and improve skin clarity.

This is the fifth product in S’able Labs’ lineup, joining the likes of Kasil Cleanser and Exfoliating Face Mask, Black Seed Toner, Baobab Moisturizer, and Rooibos Micellar Water.

Sabrina took the okra to the product’s formulator and explained the health benefits of okra, which is also used in East Africa for joint medicinal purposes.

“When we tested this on the skin, we found something surprising because it is a very powerful antioxidant and acts as a natural Botox that reduces muscle activity at a cellular level,” she said. Ta.

Another key ingredient in the serum is the African Resurrection Plant. This is not very similar to tumbleweed and can survive for almost two years even in the harshest conditions, but as soon as it touches a drop of water it blooms in four hours and becomes green.

“We want to show people that we use African ingredients not just because it’s trendy, but because African ingredients have these resilient properties. ” Elba said.

While the brand’s core collection is five products, the serum is a natural next expansion to target other problem areas of the skin and is personal to the co-founders. Because she couldn’t find any products that matched her skin tone and skin. type.

She admits that the lack of products on the market forced her to learn more about skin care, and it was her mission to figure out why her skin wasn’t responding properly.

“I took an esthetician course and am now a trained facialist.Learning about skin, how it reacts to products and the causes of problems that occur has been a huge change for me. And that had a huge impact on the brand,” Elba said.

S’able Labs is a husband and family business, with no white labels or outside investors. Her 70% of the brand’s sales come from the US and 30% from the UK.

“In the US there is a very strong identity towards black-owned brands, and they want to support and actively seek out these brands. In the UK, that is happening, but in terms of visibility, There’s still room for improvement,” Elba said.

While she hasn’t cut out outside investors completely, she is cautious and maintains the way the brand sources raw materials from African communities and farmers, fills out DHL forms and sells products on European portals. He said he wants to help build the infrastructure that is available.

“This is a large-scale operation and has a huge impact on the bottom line. We truly believe in supporting rural people and small farmers, so it’s important that someone steps in and changes the way we do things. “We don’t want them to start. Many of the conditions that these people grow their food under are very harsh and dangerous with very low wages,” she said.

“we [as a society] “We talk about where our fair trade food and clothes come from, but we don’t talk about who the ingredients in our beauty products were grown by,” she added.

The husband-and-wife duo took a strategic approach with S’able Labs. Despite having more than 10 million followers on Instagram, their names are not featured on the packaged products.

“We created something that we felt didn’t exist, and we didn’t want people to take us out of that unique category and into an oversaturated category like celebrity skin care,” she said. Ta.

“I tell people, ‘Don’t buy Black Founders because it’s good, buy it because it works.’ Because darker skin is deficient in ceramides and is more vulnerable to aggressors. , the most sensitive skin type. [such as UV rays, blue light and air pollution],” she added.