It was 2012 and Beatrice Dixon had run out of patience. She was dealing with chronic bacterial vaginosis that came back almost every month and doctors kept prescribing meds that were more of a quick fix than a long term solution.
Dixon felt she wasn’t being heard, so she started doing some research of her own — which was overwhelming in itself.
“I was in this constant state of taking medication, going back to the doctor and getting another prescription,” says Dixon, “which then led to Google’s doctor’s office. That’s not what you want to be in. I don’t want to be on Google trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”
Dixon began alternating between medication and holistic treatments she researched online, but saw no significant results. Then, her grandmother spoke to her in a dream.
She describes how her grandmother (whom she never got to know) sat across from her at a round table. The room was all white, with just the two of them in the center.
“I remember her telling me, ‘I’m not here to talk. I’m not going to be here long,'” Dixon recalled. “You’ve got to memorize what’s on that paper, because that’s going to solve your problem.”
Dixon awoke with a kind of urgency she had never experienced and immediately began jotting down the ingredients that came to her in her sleep. Dixon began collecting the aforementioned ingredients at Whole Foods, where she worked at the time, and within days, she created her own formula.
After the fifth day of using the formula, Dixon was completely cured of her BV.
“It had literally disappeared,” he says. “It was crazy. That was the moment I realized this is what I was going to do for the foreseeable future.”
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“It got to the point where people were like, ‘Look, I can’t take it for free anymore.’
After Dixon perfected her formula, she knew she had to share her discovery. Because Dixon had only raised funding from family and friends and created the product in her own kitchen, she couldn’t afford a clinical trial—so she made her own.
Dixon asked for no money in return for her homemade product, which eventually became The Honey Pot Co’s Normal Wash best seller. Instead, she asked people to review the formula and give her feedback on how well it worked or not.
Her friends and family were hooked.
“It got to the point where people were like, ‘Look, I can’t take it for free anymore, get some money,'” says Dixon.
That’s when Dixon knew she wanted something, so when word got out that the Bronner Brothers Beauty Show was coming to Atlanta, she used it as her opportunity to expand her reach.
“It felt like the best place to launch because there was nothing but people with boobs walking around,” laughs Dixon. “So we went to the hair show. We made 600 bottles. We sold 600 bottles. It was crazy.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of The Honey Pot
“There wasn’t even a plan B, so this s**t he had to work.”
That was in early 2014, just about a year and a half after Dixon made her first Honey Pot product. The business began to grow, and despite growing demand, The Honey Pot continued to operate out of Dixon’s kitchen for another two years, while Dixon kept her full-time job at Whole Foods to make ends meet.
Through 80-hour weeks and tireless work, Dixon never wavered from her mission, confident that women needed her product in their lives. “It was very difficult,” she recalls, “but I always knew that no matter what, we would be okay. There was no plan B either, so this kind of thing he had to work
In the early days of Honey Pot, the team traveled to trade shows and natural hair shows handing out products to people interested in their plant-based approach to feminine care. One of those first recipients was a hairdresser, who was so impressed with the product that she told her client about it. That customer was a Target shopper — the rest is history.
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The retail giant took the wind out of the company by 2016 and presented Dixon and her small team with a proposal to sell their products in their stores. It was the expansion Dixon had always dreamed of — literally. By the time Target decided to sell the products in stores across the country, the company had produced about 24,000 bottles and made nearly $250,000.
From there, The Honey Pot has continued to grow not only as a business, but as a platform to empower other women of color to “reclaim their wellness.”
Dixon and The Honey Pot launched the Reclaiming Wellness campaign in 2020, where the company — in partnership with Target — travels to historically black universities and hosts seminars and talks on wellness and encourages women to “reclaim” their power when it comes to for their body.
Image Credit: Courtesy of The Honey Pot
“As you grow as a business, it’s important to understand where you are, but also to understand where you want to go when you have more resources.”
One of Dixon’s main initiatives is to address societal stereotypes when it comes to being a woman of color in the US — particularly, she says, combating the problematic belief that “black women are stronger.”
“This is the mantra that creates an environment for black women to die [during] childbirth more than anyone else,” she says. “We help women understand that [they] I don’t need you to keep dying.”
Although the Reclaiming Wellness campaign is only in its third year, the initiative has been Dixon’s goal since launching the brand in 2014. Prior to 2020, Dixon did not have the capital to launch Reclaiming Wellness, so as the company growing up, she jumped at the chance to carry out her primary mission all over again.
“As you grow as a business, it’s important to understand where you are, but also to understand where you want to go when you have more resources,” he says.
Now in its third annual campaign, The Honey Pot is partnering with Target and traveling to Clark Atlanta, Howard, Prairie View A&M and North Carolina A&T to host panel discussions with experts in both medicine and education to help women to take ownership of their good. being.
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Dixon hopes that The Honey Pot will continue to not only serve as a resource for women to understand their bodies and find the healing they need, but also to become a vehicle for passing on information to future generations.
“It’s a very tribal thing, being able to pass information on, and that’s literally built into the fabric of the Honey Pot — being able to educate and empower women in whatever they need,” says Dixon. “From the beginning, we were focused on it being a generational thing. But what has developed now is that it has to be a generational thing as it relates to education, self-love, self-respect.”