Creator Spotlight: Funke Braithwaite on building Eudaimonia — a wellness hub for African women.
Funke Braithwaite is the founder of Eudaimonia Wellness Hub, which according to their Instagram, is your African guide to human flourishing.
In this week’s creator spotlight feature, Funke tells us the inspiration behind creating this space.
T: How did you come up with the name — Eudaimonia (Pronounced U-de-‘mOn-E-a)?
F: When I came up with the idea of the wellness hub, I wanted a cool name for it. I had a list of options, but I wasn’t really sure about them. I slept and dreamt of this word which is actually a topic that we were taught about in my A-Levels in my Philosophy and Ethics class. It basically talks about a standard of living that chooses things that are healthier and have more longevity than temporary pleasures. It explains that we should aim for higher things, for example, choosing to eat healthy meals that will nourish the body rather than having ice cream. It was so crazy that I dreamt of that word, I looked it up, and it encapsulated everything the brand stands for.
T: Tell us about Eudaimonia Wellness Hub.
F: The goal of Eudaimonia is to promote and celebrate wellness. I’ve been a consumer of wellness content and products for a long time. I felt that it was owned by a western perspective — people who didn’t look like me. The inspiration for the space was an outlet that caters specifically to women in Africa — on the continent and within the diaspora who want to live well, be intentional about their lives, but also want content, product and events that relate to their existence and way of life. That was how the idea was borne.
T: What are some of the wellness services provided in the hub?
F: I wouldn’t say we have services but that we have curated experiences around wellness. In the past, we’ve done things like therapeutic painting sessions and our popular class, which is the spin and brunch sessions where you come in and spin with our partner gym, and after that, there is complimentary brunch. This was borne out of the idea that exercise doesn’t have to be stressful and unenjoyable. We wanted to create a fun and memorable experience and build a community of people who work out together and encourage each other.
T: How do you choose what experiences to host?
F: It’s definitely based on a mix of my interests and things that I think will be interesting to other people along with availability — a lot of our partners are Nigerian brands, so we like to work with brands that are doing exciting things in their field, and we think that we can build a wellness experience with. We also like to think about experiences that people gravitate to but are not readily available in Nigeria. For example, spinning in other parts of the world is a big deal, but that is not the case in Nigeria. So I knew that was something that could be exciting, so we offered it.
T: Are there any plans to open wellness hubs in other parts of Nigeria?
F: We definitely plan to expand, maybe not physically but in other ways. Right now, we are focusing on building a larger community, spreading the gospel of wellness and encouraging women to really take care of themselves, be intentional about their lives and seize every opportunity to live a better life.
T: We are rooting for you, Funke.
F: Thank you.
T: How did you find out about tix.africa?
F: We found out about tix through one of our partners, The Native. We worked with them on a couple of events, and a team member was using tix to sell tickets and suggested that we try it out. I found out that it worked really well for what we wanted to do, and we ended up using it long term.
T: What has been your experience using tix?
F: I really like it. I like that we have everything in one place. I found it was a struggle to collect payments on a different platform than where your event is listed, communicate with people, collect enough data, and tix helped us do all of that on one platform. I also like that we could create multiple ticket types. I’m excited that we have something like this in Africa.
T: What is your favourite tix feature?
F: I would say it’s the ability to create multiple ticket types. That was a problem that we were trying to solve when we started out and it was one of the things that attracted me to tix. I could have all my offerings in one place.
T: Do you have any features you’d like to see on tix?
F: I can’t really think of any feature off the top of my head.
T: It’s the end of the year and we can expect to see brands organize one event or the other. Should we be expecting anything from Eudaimonia?
F: Definitely. We have a lot of partnerships that were hoping to have in December, and we have some exciting things coming, so look out for those.
T: We’ll definitely be looking out for those on tix. Thank you for speaking with me, Funke.
P.S: If you are looking for therapeutic content on Instagram, you should check out Eudaimonia’s page here.
