By Jennifer Zarate
Wicked Local Metro, Needham, Mass.
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) As an entrepreneur, Amelia Childs first tackled vegan food with her creperie and smoothie bar called “CrepeBerry.” Now, she is pursuing the beauty product market with her “Manipura Body & Mind” line. The products are all reiki infused (reiki is a Japanese technique that channels energy by means of touch to promote healing) and vegan, (containing no animal products).
Wicked Local Metro, Needham, Mass.
CrepeBerry Owner Amelia Childs is growing her passion project of Reiki-infused vegan beauty products with the help of Babson College students.
CrepeBerry, at 352 Washington St. in Wellesley, is a vegetarian creperie and smoothie bar. “I wanted to make vegetarian food very accessible for people,” said Childs. “There’s so much good food that Mother Nature just gives us that I like to make food that people don’t realize is vegetarian.”
Childs has been a vegan for 14 years. And at just 28 years old, this young entrepreneur is looking to expand her business beyond food.
Manipura Body & Mind
Manipura Body & Mind products are all vegan, (containing no animal products) and Reiki infused, said Childs. Reiki is a Japanese technique that channels energy by means of touch to promote healing.
“We bless all of our [beauty] products before they go out to stores and customers,” added Childs. The Reiki-infused vegan line offers bath bombs, lip balms and other cosmetic products.
Reiki “has become more prevalent in cancer units and hospitals, and in nursing homes and hospice care because Reiki treats the whole person including mind, body and spirit,” she said.
On a volunteer basis, Childs said, she uses the healing technique with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) patients and with people undergoing chemotherapy. “It’s hands-on healing that acts as conduit for energy to flow through to people who need it.”
Having a 90-hour work week “just as most people starting businesses do,” she said, is what inspired Childs to create Manipura Body & Mind. “I wanted to give myself a reminder to center myself even if it was just for a second in a day with affirmations on lip balms.”
For example, “I am strong, courageous and powerful,” said Childs. “It corresponds with the solar plexus chakra,” otherwise known as Manipura.
Manipura Body & Mind beauty products can be found in several stores in Salem, Allston, Natick, and the South Shore.
“Amelia Childs is one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs and is quite young for her level of achievements,” said Nair Akhil Suresh, co-founder of Parzenn Consulting, a Babson startup that offers management consulting services.
Parzenn Consulting
Suresh hails from the southern part of India, from a state called Kerala. After he graduated from college, followed by an MBA (Master of Business Administration), Suresh worked in New Delhi & Mumbai at Hindustan Times, India’s largest media firm.
It was while there “I got the idea to start my own consulting firm for small businesses, and eventually started working full-time on this idea,” said Suresh.
Suresh came to America in May 2017 to attend Babson College, where he majors in Entrepreneurship Studies. He is pursing Babson’s one-year MBA program and will be graduating in May 2018.
Through Babson’s Butler Venture Accelerator — a program that promotes startup ideas by Babson students and provides them with the resources and guidance to launch and grow a business — Suresh and his full-time partner, Dhvanish “Danny” Shah, co-founded Parzenn Consulting.
“[Parzenn Consulting] stands for surpassing the zenith and going above and beyond to ensure that our clients grow,” said Suresh.
By embedding Babson’s philosophy of entrepreneurial thought and action into their company culture, Suresh said, “We see ourselves disrupting the world of consulting.”
“We believe that small business owners, who form the backbone of the U.S. economy, are able to grow their businesses much more efficiently when they have advisors and consultants who really care about them and whom they have strong personal and professional ties with,” he added.
Parzenn Consulting currently have seven clients based out of Boston and New York.
Childs’ passion project is their first Wellesley business.
Management consulting
Using their skill sets in marketing and business process excellence, Suresh said, Parzenn Consulting will be conducting market research on Childs’ product line of vegan beauty products to analyze the market for competitors and possible pricing strategies.
“We will also be doing surveys to understand her target customers to know better how to package and position her product,” he said.
In the next phase, Suresh said, he and Shah will be analyzing and optimizing Childs’ manufacturing processes to see how costs can be reduced and how demand spikes can be met.
“In essence, we would be utilizing major concepts we have learned from our courses here at Babson and applying it to help her grow her business,” said Suresh.
