We are Tazkia and Taariq, a wife and husband, mom and dad team, who are BIG on family life. We started this company after many years of hopes, and a ‘one-day’ dream. I come from a Hospitality background, and Taariq comes from Retail and Business. At the core of these lies Customer Service. With our combined strengths, skills and knowledge, we always knew that we would one day want to open our own company and make our own working hours to achieve the best life/work balance.
However, life got busy, at the very beginning, we both loved working and being career people, and our family we dreamed of became a reality. But juggling work and family life saw us do more work and less family. I became a ‘stay at home mom’ and we decided to homeschool, which meant Taariq continued giving his all to corporate life, to climb that ladder, to give his family the best.
But to give us the best, meant giving his all to work life and after a few years, it just didn’t seem to align with how we wanted to live our lives, which is to live simply, slowly, and happily with our beautiful boys and each other. I know, isn’t this the dream for most? What made us think we could have that? But, we put our trust and faith in God, and in each other, and slowly, we started planning, and putting those plans into action, and eventually our ‘one-day’ dream started becoming a reality. This led to Taariq ending his service at his job.., and here we are.
I have been making simple, natural body care products for our family for the past few years and the difference we experienced, just by eliminating toxins and harsh chemicals, was incredible. So we extended this by slowly eliminating these harsh chemicals, not just from body care products, but in our household items too, such as detergents, cookware, textiles. We knew there would be individuals and families who wanted the same for themselves and their families, and it seemed natural and wonderful to share these products. We hope to grow in our knowledge of safe ingredients and products for our family, and hope that you will grow with us too.
I grew up by a river, quite literally a hop, skip and jump away, from the Tugela River mouth, in KZN. My love for nature and the natural things in life stem from those days. The best memories I have are of playing in the river with my best friends and cousins. The days of my childhood were sublime; carefree, simple, slow, happy, in fact, very much what we want for our kids now.
So, how did we get to the name of this company? Well, Taariq has always called me a “Riverchild”
