Sandra Velasquez pitched her Mexican botanical bath and body brand to the famous investors on ABC’s Shark Tank in an episode that aired on Friday, Jan. 20.

The 44-year-old started creating soaps when she found herself unemployed and visiting with her parents in the North Park home she grew up in. While it was scary to be caring for her daughter after her career as a professional musician ended, Velasquez took it as an opportunity.

“It was a moment… to really step into my power and to create something bigger than bigger than previous companies that I had worked for. Here was an opportunity for me to actually do it for myself and do it for the community,” Velasquez explained in a phone interview the day after her Shark Tank episode aired.

Like many Mexican families, a nopal cactus stood in her family’s driveway. She said a light bulb came on and she decided to create a high-end beauty brand based around the iconic cactus. The very first soap formulations she tried used pieces from her childhood’s prickly pear cactus that inspired her.

“Every Mexican person grew up with [nopales]. It’s just such a staple of Mexican culture,” she said.

With no income, she founded Nopalera on her American Express card, starting first by enrolling in formulation school. She took on part-time jobs to pay the rent but still focused on building the company from scratch.

“It was a lot of the big decisions that I made in the beginning, about really dreaming big and building the brand that I wanted versus building a brand that I could quote-unquote afford at that time— because I couldn’t afford to do anything,” Velasquez said.

The Latina bath brand incorporates the vegetation and scents she grew up with – sage, tangerine, jasmine, hibiscus, tepezcohuite. Velasquez focuses on using clean ingredients – no palm oil, synthetic scents or dyes in the vegan offerings.

The cactus soaps are molded in the shape of the nopal’s iconic paddle. The company’s botanical bars are sold in reusable, recyclable tins rather than in large plastic lotion bottles. The moisturizing exfoliants are sold in glass jars.

The high-end brand has grown nationally. It is sold in Nordstrom, Credo Beauty, and over 350 independent retailers nationwide. Still, the brand that proudly celebrates Mexican culture receives strong support locally.

“We have a lot of wholesale accounts, but our number one boutique in the entire country is Art Alexia in North Park, which was even shocking to us because it’s not New York City. It’s not Chicago, it’s not Los Angeles, all these big cities,” Velasquez said, urging people interested in the brand to shop at the independent local boutique.

It was an eight-month process to apply and be on Shark Tank. Everything needed to be vetted and checked ahead of time. Then, she described being in the tank as “intense.” Unlike when it airs on tv, the stage is dead quiet with no music. The sharks argue with each other so the entrepreneur has to know how to command the conversation.

“[It’s] a once-in-a-lifetime experience and it also just flies by so fast. There’s no clocks anywhere. So I have no idea what time I went into the tank and what time I came out. I have no idea how long I was in there. It really felt like it flew by,” she explained.

Velasquez turned down the $300,000 deal offered to her, knowing she could find better investors elsewhere. She was right – since filming the episode in July 2022, she raised $2.7 million on her own.

Still, Shark Tank gave her an opportunity to reach a much broader audience. The website, nopalera.co, received an unprecedented influx of orders in the night and morning after the episode aired. Velasquez was coordinating with her team and the warehouse the products are made in to fulfill the spike in orders before the Saturday morning phone interview.

“I just hope the takeaway is that we always have the decision the power to change our lives,” Velasquez said.