by Mr. Anthony Davis
When Dannett Cage, owner of Beyond Bodi, started a black-owned business selling sea moss-infused skincare and edibles, it was in response to growing requests from friends and family to try , and often to buy, his homemade products.
“I was really only doing it for my family, like my mom and my house,” Cage recalled. “Then I made it on a Friday night as I went out for a girls’ getaway this weekend, and everyone tried it and couldn’t believe the energy it gave them.”
So, in the summer of 2020, Cage started posting their products on social media and it all took off from there. At first, Cage did not charge for its products. She made them as her friends and family asked her to. But as people kept coming back and new people arriving, some even from different states, she soon realized she had to start a business to keep up.
Cage is located in Renton, but sells its products online. She is often in the South Seattle community and enjoys showing up at community events where she hands out free product samples to people and provides them with information about the health benefits of sea moss.
“It started as an accident,” Cage recalls. “At the end of July when my website went live, I remember within the first hour I had probably made 100 sales.” At the time, Cage had worked for a telecommunications company for 10 years. Within three months of launching her website, she quit her job and started selling her sea moss products full time.
Sea moss, or Chondrus crispus, is a species of red algae that grows on the Atlantic coast of Europe and North America and became popular in the United States at the end of the pandemic due of its potential benefits for the immune system. When consumed, it is said to provide energy and promote muscle recovery. When used on the skin, it acts as a moisturizer and helps fight acne and rosacea.
Beyond Bodi offers both skincare and sea moss edibles. One of the most popular items is lemonades. With fruity flavors like blueberry, strawberry, and pineapple, these lemonades taste great and have become a big hit with kids, even though they’re completely sugar-free.
“Lemonades are great because they’re portable,” Cage says. “And the kids love lemonades because they think they’re just drinking mommy’s lemonade. Parents hide their lemonade from kids so they don’t try to drink them all at once.
The lemonades each contain two tablespoons of sea moss gel, but the gel itself is tasteless. So when you take a sip, you only experience the tangy sweetness of the natural fruit flavor.
But one of the premium products on the Beyond Bodi website is the Sea Moss Salt Body Scrub. This peppermint exfoliating scrub, used in the shower, leaves skin feeling soft and hydrated for hours. Cage had been making her own body scrubs for decades, long before she discovered sea moss, and she now says using this body scrub made her skin feel so moist that she rarely uses lotion.
“I love baths and I like my skin to be soft,” she explains. “So I started making sea moss body scrubs. And it’s really good for people who have skin problems like eczema. Sea moss has a lot of essential vitamins and it’s really good for people who have skin problems like eczema. is a soothing agent.… So if you have dark spots, blemishes or something like that, that’s where the sea foam body scrub comes in. So it’s one of my favorites I can use this whole jar in one bath.
Although this company was started in response to a growing social media trend during the pandemic, Cage is a firm believer in the health benefits and quality of its products. “There’s a lot of money in the sea foam,” Cage says. “I feel like during the pandemic a bunch of people started selling it, but I’m one of the last ones standing. I take my business seriously; I think including the educational parts is the why I did so well.
Mr. Anthony Davis (Mike Davis) is a local journalist covering arts, culture and sports.
📸 Featured Image: Photo by nito/Shutterstock.com
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