14 children and 2 million dollars: how the American got rich in an unusual business
'03.04.2018'
Source: CNN
The mistress of a thriving business and the mother of 14 children, the founder of the Shea Terra Organics brand, Tammy Umbel never rests.
The day begins on her farm in Leesburg, Virginia, where she spends every morning answering emails and helping eight younger children prepare for the day ahead, tells CNN.
Later, Tammy spends about four hours teaching them everything from the art of speech to mathematics in the home class here. When the lessons end, Umbel goes to the factory in 30 minutes away. There she stays until late at night, after which she returns home and sleeps 5-6 hours. And so every day.
But all this does not happen before Umbel, a devout Muslim woman, gathers her entire family for morning prayers. 45-year-old woman runs Shea Terra Organics, a company that makes skin and hair care products. Products contain shea butter and other exotic ingredients from Africa, such as Maoba or Marula oil.
She started a business in 2000 with 1500 dollars in her pocket and started making a profit five years later. Last year, sales brought Umbel 2 a million dollars. Shea Terra Organics now has seven employees, but Umbel herself does a lot: she develops new products and controls marketing, packaging and distribution.
The idea came to her in a mosque, where a woman was watching the Africans and women in other countries. She asked them about what products they use for their beauty rituals. Tammy wanted to bring these ingredients to a wider market in America. Umbel contacted the first supplier and began selling black cumin oil and shea butter online. It was going, but very slowly. In the 2001 year, for the whole month, the sale of butter brought her only 1000 dollars.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since then - now its business is a national brand that sells more than 300 products - both online and in specialty stores throughout the United States. Several times a year, Umbel travels to Africa to personally meet with suppliers and discover new ingredients. But now she has a higher goal: the woman wants to help local people and open up opportunities for them, and she also works in a way that does not harm the environment. Umbel donates 2,5% of his annual savings to charity, mainly for an organization called Uganda's Village of Hope.
But turning a good idea into a thriving business that helps others is not her only achievement. The woman has fourteen children between the ages of 5 and 27, all of whom were homeschooled. The six seniors are already attending college in a variety of disciplines, including medicine and engineering. The younger eight live with Tammy and her husband on the farm.
Tammy met her future husband, a nephrologist who moved to the United States from Pakistan at a mosque in Washington. When the relationship got serious, she told him that she wanted to live on a farm so that the family could be self-sufficient. As a child, Tammy never went to farms, and jokes that if you compare her girlhood and family life, these are two completely different lives. Now children not only study on the farm, but also help with the breeding and keeping of animals that the family keeps - these are sheep, chickens, horses and even bees.
Umbel grew up in Maryland as a Christian, Irish-German, single mother. As Tammy herself says, she did not graduate from school, although she was in the program for gifted students, the family lived very poorly, several times they found themselves without a roof over their heads. At the age of 15, she left home for nowhere. The girl was adopted by a Muslim family. She later adopted this religion. Tammy is now wearing a hijab. In her environment, Umbel is the only Muslim woman, so many consider her to be Syrian, Iranian or Pakistani, but she calls herself a Muslim American and is proud of it.
Looking to the future, Tammy hopes that the children will follow in her footsteps as a whole. Not necessarily, believes Umbel, that they went the same career path. But it is very important that they become the best in what they find interesting, and also participate in campaigns for the preservation of wildlife and helping people in difficult times.
