The cream that Raquel Cámara sells today began as a master formula designed to heal her own dermatitis. She had dry skin and started playing with natural ingredients until she found what she needed. "I gave it to customers to try because it was made with local products, like the oil from the town's Cooperative," she says. Then her curiosity got piqued and she ended up training in dermocosmetics... "and I started doing more things," explains this entrepreneur, who started the newcomer to the market CN Pharma in that pharmacy she ran with her sister in Gátova, next to the Sierra Calderona.
They had both bought the business in 2006 after a trip to London and there they learned that "there are those who only want a protector, those who only want to wash their face, those who don't wear anything, those who have drier skin... People don't want get overwhelmed, he wants things easy. It was 17 years that are now behind her because since last summer she has been working to promote her small cosmetics firm. She and her sister, now focused on teaching, run this small business that already has 30 pharmacies in the Valencian Community where they sell their product.
But the pandemic happened in Gátova - "in those months the pharmacies were not even for creams or anything at all" - and after this, he explains that consultations increased, many from people with skin problems due to high exposure to screens. Among the master formulas of his creams, the use of rice germ oils stands out, an ingredient rarely used in the cosmetic sector and which has, he claims, "very beneficial" properties to repair the skin. "It is a great unknown and I tried it by studying. When I came to vegetable oils, sesame or rosehip, I bought them all and started trying and I liked the rice germ one because it is not greasy, it blurs stains and unifies skin tone, with an ultraviolet protection effect," he explains.
With a great vocation and an interest in training the client, she is now settled in Valencia, from where she works so that her formulas become a product in a small laboratory in Catarroja where they are produced. From there she goes to pharmacies and also to e-commerce, where above all she buys a client who is more expert in cosmetics who "knows how to read the compositions well and looks for very specific things."
She recently won one of the three Wayco scholarships in Valencia - the prize was two work spaces in her coworking in Cabanyal - and now she is excited to grow the project, "in which I believe and trust." Without daring to give growth or billing figures, she acknowledges that "at least I can get the numbers." Hers is a natural and vegan cosmetics firm, "minimalist in ingredients", as she describes herself, and for all skin types. "I've been dedicating myself to this exclusively for seven months, but I want to go further," she aspires.
