Rising from Adversity: The Inspiring Journey of byelei’s Founder, Ellie

I haven’t done one of these in a while and I wanted to reintroduce myself. So I’m Ellie. I’m the founder of byelei. I’m 25. I started byelei coming out of lockdown. I had severe acne, I was really stressed, I was struggling a lot. Um, during this time I went on accutane, which actually broke down my lip barrier. Skin cleared up, but I had severe lip damage. They were bleeding constantly in the corners, like, they were just literally peeling off my face. And nothing at the time was healing them, nothing was fixing them. And it just made me so, so down and like, I lost all my confident. There was nothing on the market that was fixing my, um, lip problem at the time, cause I needed to finish my treatment. There was just nothing that was fixing or soothing my lips. So try and make my own lip balm. And this is obviously initially just for me. And after loads and loads of samples, um, loads of failed attempts, I finally found a formula that worked and I was like, right, I’m gonna make a lip balm brand. And that was just my initial plan, and it was just to sell to friends and family and then I was gonna carry on, go back to my old jobs, um, when everything lifted. And then I had 10,000 lip balms arrived and they were wrong. Um, that was the first hurdle. But I wanted to come On here. And because I found my old phone at the weekend and I looked at some of the pictures, um, of my skin and like how low I was, um, and it made me actually a little bit. A little bit upset. But, um, I just wanted to come on here and do this video. It’s like reintroduce myself and sort of just let you know that I’m so grateful for everything that every single customer, every single follower does. Like, it means so much to me. You’ve allowed us to grow so much and support so many people. We get kind of messages and reviews every single day saying that people feel so much more confident with our products and you’ve allowed us to expand. You’ve also allowed our factory, which is women owned, and to get a bigger factory, which is amazing. And I just feel like all these moments from such a low space are so important to share with you. Um, and I’m just gonna share some of these pictures of how low I was with my skin. It’s really sad to see, um, but I was 21 then, um, and that’s when I just started. And the brand has empowered me so much in made me feel so confident and, and learning from so many beautiful people. I’ve managed to work with so many amazing creatives and I’m just so lucky every day and. And that I work so hard to create the best Products and seeing these, that gave me more fire and even more than I already have. But I just wanted to come on here and reintroduce myself because all our socials have grown so much recently as well, and I just. I’m super, super grateful. And I’ve got something so massive to share soon, and it’s like something I’ve been dreaming of for so, so long. Wanna say thank you. Thank you. Thank you.