Dakimo was founded in 2012 in Cotonou, Benin. In the beginning, we produced a single product: extra virgin peanut oil, made for the table rather than the skin.
The Afternoon That Changed Everything
Everything changed in 2015. Our eldest daughter, then just nine months old, accidentally drank a small amount of her mother's face lotion. It was the greatest fright of our lives. We rushed to the hospital; the doctors ran their tests and reassured us she was perfectly fine.
But once home, reading that lotion's label — twenty-two ingredients long — one question stayed with us:
That question never really left us. It is what turned an edible-oil producer into a natural cosmetics company, and it is still what we ask of every ingredient that carries the Dakimo name.
What That Discipline Looks Like Today
Today that same discipline shapes everything from our cold-pressed oils to our haircare range: short, legible ingredient lists, sourced and processed close to home, and documented batch by batch.
Dakimo now operates across three sites — two in Cotonou (our production plant and our in-house analytic laboratory) and a raw-material and powder workshop in Boifo, northern Benin. At Boifo, we work with 9 women's cooperatives on raw-material collection, plus 2 further cooperatives dedicated to producing our Baobab and Moringa powders.
Every shipment that leaves Cotonou for our B2B buyers across the EU, UK, USA and Canada is backed by a full technical and regulatory dossier — the same standard we wished had been on that lotion label back in 2015.