Cosi Care eczema relief – 2019 Creative Industries winner
Lauren Bell, 2019 Creative Industries Award winner, Cosi Care
“When I entered the competition, I was a designer. Now I am an entrepreneur.”
Lauren Bell, used her experiences with chronic eczema to create Cosi Care – a line of products to relieve the symptoms of eczema and other skin conditions. Designed with children in mind, Cosi Care products feature quick-cooling technology to stop itching in its tracks. A natural solution to eczema symptoms, Cosi Care products can be used alongside moisturisers.
When entering the competition, Cosi Care was at an early business stage, with one working prototype. “I was based at the Central Research Lab, learning about running a business and how to write a business plan,” explains Lauren. “The Mayor’s Entrepreneur was one of the first competitions I entered with this business concept.”
Before entering, Lauren had no pitching experience, and credits the competition for giving her the confidence to speak comfortably about her business idea. A key learning from the pitching workshop for Lauren was not being afraid to tell her own story when selling her product. “The Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition had one of the best pitching workshops I’ve ever had,” she says. “If you’ve done that and done that well, it’s a really big confidence boost and shows that you’re on the right track.”
Helping ‘every itchy child outmatch the scratch’, Cosi Care’s Scratch Star was a unique and ground-breaking idea that allowed children to manage itching by themselves. Since winning the awards, Cosi Care has won four more competitions, secured an investor, grown from a team of one to a team of eight and launched the Scratch Attack roller.
Lauren says that authenticity is a key part of her success. “If you have a personal story attached to your product, tell it. I think you should be as authentic as you can be,” she says
