Six Years of Lueur Cosmetics Lab: The Story I Almost Forgot to Tell
Six years ago, I was selling cosmetics.
About eight years ago, I was already making them.
When I say those numbers out loud, I have to pause a little.
Because when you’re in the middle of building a business, you don’t always stop to realise that time is passing.
You’re thinking about the next order.
The next batch.
The next client.
The next problem to solve.
And then suddenly, you look up and realise:
I’ve been doing this for six years.
Six years since I started selling cosmetics.
About eight years since I started making them.
And somehow, that little thing I started figuring out for myself became Lueur Cosmetics Lab.
I Didn’t Start Out Knowing I Wanted to Build a Cosmetics Company
This is probably the part people don’t know.
I didn’t sit down one day with a grand business plan and say, “I am going to build a cosmetic manufacturing company in Ghana.”
Absolutely not.
I was trying to figure things out.
At the time, I didn’t even fully understand what was possible.
I thought if you wanted to have a skincare business, you basically found products that already existed, bought them and sold them.
I knew brands like The Ordinary, Neutrogena and CeraVe.
But the idea that I could actually make my own products?
That was a completely different world.
Then I started researching.
And I discovered that I could formulate.
I could learn about ingredients.
I could make my own products.
And honestly, that discovery opened up a whole can of worms.
Because once I knew I could make the products, the next question became:
How?
Where do I get the ingredients?
What equipment do I need?
How do I formulate properly?
How do I manufacture?
How do I package?
How do I register this with the FDA?
How do I know whether what I’ve made is actually good?
There was no neat little roadmap sitting in front of me.
So I started building one.
I Learned by Doing. But I Also Went Looking for Knowledge.
I did a lot of learning by doing, but I was never satisfied with simply experimenting and hoping something worked.
The more I got into cosmetics, the more I realised how much there was to understand.
So I went looking for the knowledge.
I took courses.
I attended trainings.
I studied formulation.
I learned about ingredients, preservation, emulsions, product development, manufacturing and regulation.
And I deliberately trained in different places.
I’ve had training across the UK, the United States, Canada, Asia and Ghana.
That was intentional.
I wanted to understand more than just how to make a product.
I wanted to understand how different markets think about cosmetics.
What consumers in different parts of the world expect.
How climate can influence formulation.
How ingredients are used differently.
How regulations differ.
How manufacturing practices differ.
And how all of that should influence what I eventually make here.
Because a formula that works beautifully in one environment isn’t automatically the right formula for another.
The market matters.
The consumer matters.
The climate matters.
The regulations matter.
The manufacturing process matters.
All of these things became part of how I think about product development today.
And my education outside cosmetics has shaped that thinking too.
I’m a medical scientist, cosmetic scientist and medical doctor.
Those disciplines have given me very different ways of looking at the same product.
Science asks:
Does it work?
Medicine asks:
Is it appropriate and safe for the person using it?
Cosmetic science asks:
Can we formulate it properly, make it consistently and give the consumer the experience they want?
Business asks:
Can we actually build something sustainable around it?
I didn’t necessarily know all of that when I started.
But over the years, those worlds began to come together.
And that became the foundation of how I approach cosmetics.
I Made Mistakes Too
Training didn’t mean I suddenly became perfect.
I still made mistakes.
I made products that didn’t turn out the way I wanted.
I wasted ingredients.
I reformulated.
I learnt that what works on a small laboratory scale doesn’t always behave the same way when you’re making a much larger batch.
I learnt about packaging.
I learnt about sourcing.
I learnt about manufacturing.
I learnt about regulatory requirements.
And every mistake taught me something that eventually became useful to someone else.
That’s one of the things I value most about experience.
You don’t just learn the lesson.
You eventually become able to help someone else avoid making the same mistake.
Then I Became the Person Other People Started Asking
Eventually, I launched my own retail skincare brand.
And that experience changed the direction of my business.
Because I started meeting people who wanted to do exactly what I had done.
They had an idea.
They wanted their own skincare or haircare brand.
They wanted to make something different.
But they didn’t know where to start.
And I recognised the look.
Because I had been there.
That feeling of:
“I have this idea, but I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”
So people started asking me questions.
Then they started asking for help.
Then consultation became part of what I did.
Then formulation.
Then manufacturing.
Then regulatory support.
And eventually, Lueur Cosmetics Lab became what it is today.
Lueur Wasn’t Really Built From a Business Plan
It was built from problems.
Every stage of the business came from something I had either experienced myself or watched another founder struggle with.
Someone couldn’t find a manufacturer.
Someone needed a formula.
Someone didn’t understand the FDA process.
Someone had a product idea but didn’t know whether it was technically possible.
Someone had a beautiful brand but didn’t know how to turn it into an actual product.
And every time, I found myself thinking:
“I know how this feels.”
So we built systems around those problems.
That’s a big part of what LCL has become.
Not just a place where you come and get a product made.
A place where you can come with an idea that is still messy and start figuring it out.
I’ve Also Changed
I think this is important to say.
The business isn’t the only thing that has grown.
I have too.
The woman who started making cosmetics years ago did not know what I know now.
She didn’t have the experience.
She didn’t have the network.
She didn’t understand the industry the way I do today.
And she certainly didn’t have all the answers.
But she started anyway.
And I am very grateful that she did.
Because if I had waited until I knew everything, Lueur Cosmetics Lab probably wouldn’t exist.
God Has Been Part of This Story From the Beginning
I can’t tell my story honestly without saying this.
God has been at the centre of it.
There have been moments when I genuinely did not know what the next step was.
There have been seasons when the business was difficult.
There have been decisions I didn’t feel completely prepared to make.
And somehow, there was always another step.
Another idea.
Another person.
Another opportunity.
Another door.
Looking back, I can see God’s hand in a lot of things that I didn’t understand at the time.
So when I celebrate Lueur, I’m not only celebrating what I have built.
I’m grateful for the grace that allowed me to build it.
Six Years Later, This Is What We Do
Today, Lueur Cosmetics Lab works with founders and businesses to develop and manufacture beauty products.
Skincare.
Haircare.
Body care.
Personal care.
Custom formulations.
Private label.
Manufacturing.
Regulatory support.
And now, we’re also building tools and systems to make the process easier for founders.
That last part is especially exciting to me.
Because I remember what it felt like not to know.
And I don’t want founders to have to spend years making the same mistakes simply because nobody showed them the way.
We Are Still Building
Six years in, I don’t feel like the story is finished.
If anything, I think we’re finally getting into the interesting part.
We’re building better systems.
We’re developing new products.
We’re working with more founders.
We’re solving problems that I didn’t even know existed when I started.
And we’re thinking much bigger about what Lueur Cosmetics Lab can become.
But I also don’t want to become so focused on what’s next that I forget to appreciate what has already happened.
So today, I want to pause.
Six years of selling cosmetics.
About eight years of making them.
Years of learning.
Years of training.
Years of experiments.
Years of mistakes.
Years of clients.
Years of products.
Years of figuring things out.
And a business that started with me simply trying to understand how to make cosmetics.
That’s something worth celebrating.
If You’re Reading This With Your Own Idea
Maybe you’re where I was years ago.
You have an idea.
You don’t know exactly how to execute it.
You don’t know who to talk to.
You don’t know what the regulations are.
You don’t know whether your idea will work.
You might even think you’re not ready.
I understand that feeling very well.
You don’t need to know everything before you start.
I certainly didn’t.
But you do need to be willing to learn, ask questions, invest in yourself, make corrections and keep going.
That’s what I’ve been doing for the last eight years.
And I’m still doing it.
Here’s to six years of Lueur Cosmetics Lab.
And to whatever God has planned for the next six.
Dr. Efua K. Dwamena
Founder & Co-Owner
Lueur Cosmetics Lab