Above Us

The Necessary Start-up: How has Mayura Apothecary Filled the Gap for Skincare Consumers

     
The saying goes: ‘necessity is the mother of invention‘, nothing is truer than this statement to describe our start-up. Mayura Apothecary (MA) is born as an idea of bringing true, harmless, and natural products to the public. We started as an herbal education initiative of bringing authentic and safe complimentary medicine information to the masses, MA has now moved on to bringing our audiences a wide range of products; starting with therapeutic skincare and moving on to a complete lifestyle solution, embracing healthy cooking, safe and gentle natural detergents, as well as effective remedies.

   

Mayura Apothecary started when the founder, Henri Lai encountered a rather disturbing problem: the lack of safe and natural skincare in the market. The founder’s observation started when he encountered countless sufferers of skin problem in his day-to-day job in the pharmacy. Practising as a herbalist, he found it repugnant that the medical world did not offer anything more than steroid creams to patients with skin conditions.

   

“It is rather disturbing for a market, so large and mature, to not accomodate for people’s with dreafdul skin conditions aside from using steroid creams and chemical-enriched moisturisers”
   
Firstly, he relied on a brand well-known to the local pharmacy world as his comforter but such comfort did not last long as more and more customers complained that the range of products is becoming increasingly discomfortable and even annoying. Investigating the reasons behind, he found out that this particular range has started to include in more and more chemical ingredients without informing their consumers.

   

Knowing that this goes against ethics and common-sense, Mayura Apothecary is born. We first established to cater to a few needy customers, it has now grown to embrace everyone that has problematic skin. In definite terms, we do not aim to cure but to provide comfort as well as solace to those who are seeking permanent solution to their predicaments. We welcome those who are enthusiatic about nature and her paths.

 

Henri Lai Hon Leong

Nutritionist and Founder of Mayura Apothecary

 

 

About Her

 

Yoking Lai, our Apothecarist and the Co-Founder of Mayura Apothecary owned a Degree in Business Administration and subsequently, a Master of Science (Human Resource Development). She has been a HR Professional for 14 over years since graduation.

At the age of 28, she landed herself on a ‘high flying’ job with a fashion MNC handling both human resources and retail operations. She continued to work her way up and was elevated to Senior Management level within years of service. For a company that stressed much on productivity for sales, stocks, retail space and manpower, the pressure of working fast and accurately plus the stretched hours was not uncommon. Having to take care of the business for different countries in the region, frequent flying with frantic schedule was quite a norm. Basically, the rule of thumb for traveling was first flight out and last flight back. And tomorrow could just be another long work day!

Turning Point

She started developing allergies in year 2009 due to autoimmune system disorder and the suspected cause was no other than stress. That year served as a turning point in her life that made her pause to rethink the real meaning of life and how to live a meaningful work life. After all that was the topic for her dissertation paper some years back in the university. Her journey to Ladakh, India for a meditation and charity tour three years later had further reaffirmed her beliefs that life at its best is just being simple and natural.

The Calling

The urge of leading a meaningful life grew stronger by days and eventually she decided to quit her stable job end of year 2013 to join Henri in his natural skincare business. Yoking took over and started managing Mayura Apothecary from early 2014. Since then the range of products has been significantly widened from natural skincare to perfumery, cosmetics and now healthy baking! To further strengthen her knowledge in skin care formulation, she registered herself for a diploma course in holistic skincare products and aromatherapy. ‘She holds to her principle dearly that is to just formulate simple, natural and nice functional products.’

 

Yoking Lai

Holistic Skincare Formulator & Co-founder