MORE than SKIN DEEP

SULIE ABELL 33 Founder & CEO, Sluvi

What began as a personal journey of finding the right skincare that wouldn’t aggravate her chronic eczema, turned into a sustainable business that empowers farmers when Sulie realised the adversity faced by the farmers in her Sarawakian village. Her early exposure to social enterprise came from her university days as an International Relations student, during which she learned of the microcredit concept introduced by Muhammad Yunus to empower small businesses in Bangladesh. With this knowledge in hand, she set out to introduce a similar concept in her village of Melugu in Simanggang after learning from a bee farmer, Nancy, that half of Melugu farmers earn less than RM200 per month.

With the founding of Sluvi, one of the Top 5 winners of Shell Malaysia LiveWire 2018, Sulie is able to improve the farmers’ lives by purchasing their produce for use in her natural, eco-friendly skincare products – providing an increase of 300% in their monthly income. This proves even more beneficial during the pandemic, as a copious amount of produce has been going to waste due to wet market closures. Sluvi steps in to buy the unsold farming produce and uses it to make new special edition products such as soap, toner, face mask and body scrub.

“We aim to achieve Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG) No.3 ( Good Health and Well-Being), No.4 (Quality Education), No.8 (Decent work & Economy Growth) and No.15 ( Life on Land),” says

Sulie of her brand’s sustainability plan, adding, “We plan to work with local coffee roasters and cafes, to upcycle their used coffee grounds into natural skincare products. We will bring the coffee grounds to the farmers that we have been working with, increasing their knowledge and skills to turn it into usable raw materials for our products.”