Our Story

We all heard the old adage, "necessity is the mother of invention, with regards to our story, those words couldn't ring more true....

 Let's kick off right at the beginning, the foundations of what was to become AYA, were laid out of a woman's need. After years of running the rat race gauntlet, our founder - Keren - needed to check out. And so began a process of whittling out all the negatives associated with the 21st century living/burnout (depending on which side of the coin you're looking at). A healthy body equals a healthy mind, right? What about healthy skin - surely that can't be separate from the wellness paradigm?

Keren steadily realised that words such as: synthetic/preservatives/parabens/petroleum-derivatives, were far more synonymous with the skincare industry than she could have ever imagined. The irony of the word “care” being so closely attributed to those nasties was not lost on her. This fuelled her curiosity and led to further investigations into the world of natural ingredients and products.

In the midst of her wellness revolution, Keren welcomed two beautiful children into the world. And as we all know, there’s nothing that quite compares to a mother’s love for her children. Her son suffered from exceptionally sensitive skin, and would experience terrible reactions to conventional topical products. As fate would have it, her beloved bambino developed an angry rash whilst they were away on a family vacation. The salve that she was applying was having zero effect - panic stations set in! Keren’s mom suggested trying the pulp of one of KZN’s most ubiquitous fruit, papaya. She combined the pulp with the salve, and low and behold, instant relief!

Now did we mention that the name Keren, means “ray of light”? Well, that humble papaya had triggered her proverbial lightbulb moment, and inspiration struck. Together with her fearless environmentalist (aka mad scientist) husband, they began experimenting, and so began their quest to extract all the healing goodness from a papaya and deliver that into a topical salve formulation. Courtesy of some botanical alchemy, they achieved just that - a fermented papaya balm with ingredients that read right off the menu of Mother Nature’s bounty - completely free of synthetics. 

So back to necessity being the mother of invention. Inundated with requests from friends and family, for some of her magic balm, Keren gladly obliged. Positive feedback started pouring in, with inquiries from complete strangers for her healing papaya panacea. In a short space of time, what began as a necessity driven endeavour, evolved into the AYA collection that we all know and love.

 

AYA…From Papaya with Love

xxx