ENTREPRENEUR’S CORNER
Daisy Jing: Mogul In The Making
Self-confidence is a luxury; it isn’t ubiquitous, and it can be challenging to achieve. This is the experience of Daisy Jing, CEO, and founder of Banish. This acne-centric skincare brand has built a vast audience across social media platforms by addressing the primary skincare concern of teens and young adults.
Acne is a condition that manifests in physical effects and mental ones, affecting how we see ourselves and how others do as well. “The greatest tragedy of our generation is the never-ending struggle for perfection,” says Jing. “Social media has accelerated this trend, becoming detrimental to the self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth of millions of young people, who on average spend nine hours per day in front of screens.
TRIED IT ALL
Jing candidly admits that her story is not unique. She discusses her years years of struggles to control her acne outbreaks and maintain a low profile in school, often skipping lunch periods and distancing herself from classmates to hide her face. She went through a slew of intensive treatments that only exacerbated her skin’s condition. Jing wore black turtlenecks to school to hide more of herself, only to despair when “blizzards of skin flakes” showed on her clothes. “I remember waking up as a teenager to bloody cracks on my face because it was so dry,” she says. “My towels and sheets had streaks of white in them because of the bleaching agents in my skincare. I suffered decades of that! It was awful.”
The bullying and teasing affected her self-esteem, and she looked for solutions to rid her face of acne—the cause of her anguish. Jang reveals that she and her parents spent upwards of $20,000 in her teen years to eradicate the presence of pimples and blemishes on her face.
THE AT-HOME CURE
Escalating from drug store remedies to expensive department store brands and Chinese herbs, she often found that many solutions only made her condition worse, and dermatologists were also of little relief.
While pursuing a pre-med track at Duke University, Jing began to use her knowledge to concoct her skincare products at home in the kitchen and documented her progress online. Her foray into skincare started on YouTube with a candid video titled Growing Up Ugly. That video went viral, after which she used her channel to review skincare products to people who were drawn in by her frankness and relatability. “For once, someone wasn’t giving me unsolicited acne advice, but instead they said my skin looked great,” she says. “I realized it was because I completely changed my skincare regimen and used what I was making! I was learning that unnecessary ingredients in skincare products were making my skin break out.”
She started to receive compliments on how clear her skin appeared rather than tips on how to treat her acne, and her online fanbase was equally impressed. Soon she began to share samples with her audience, which led to her brand, Banish. Jing would create her products at night and bring them to the post office as they opened to ship them out, and would create You Tube videos in the daytime.
A 30 UNDER 30
Escalating from drug store remedies to expensive department store brands and Chinese herbs, she often found that many solutions only made her condition worse, and dermatologists were also of little relief.
Two years later, Banish has crossed $1 million in revenue, and by the eight-year mark of her business opening, it has grown into a multimillion-dollar business. “I still pinch myself that we’ve grown and have been in business for so long, having bootstrapped the business,” she says.
For more information on Banish, visit banish.com