Viavo skincare hand selected for Emmy swag bags

When The SandPaper spoke with Brant Beach resident and Viavo business owner Stacey Maggio, she was driving down the highway with the sun shining in her eyes and the warm breeze blowing through her hair. But she wasn’t heading to Long Beach Island, and she wasn’t breaking any highway safety laws, either. She was being chauffeured to the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, where she was staying the night before heading to the Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Hollywood on Saturday night.

Viavo Organic Body Polish, Maggio’s newest avocado-based beauty product, had been hand-selected to premiere in the Emmy nominees’ gift bags. Maggio couldn’t have been more ecstatic about the opportunity.

“I was part of the bag assembly yesterday, and there’s about 30 other companies here, of which I was the only one who gave away a full retail-sized beauty product,” Maggio exclaimed. “It’s pretty neat to be behind the scenes and to see some of the other entrepreneurs and their products. Other people are giving out coupon codes or smaller sample sizes, but no one else elected to give out a full-sized product. So I think I’m really going to stand out and make a good impression here tomorrow night.”

The Emmys picked up the organic beauty product after watching a YouTube video titled “Preserve Your Sexy with Viavo,” which Maggio created through an Internet marketing company called “I wear your shirt.” She paid just $70 for the 66-second trailer and thought every penny was worth it.

“A $70 YouTube video got me to Hollywood!” Maggio said with a laugh. “That’s a pretty powerful medium when you think about what print campaigns are costing people versus all the free mediums that are available through social networking. That’s where I’m directing my business this year moving forward.”

Photo courtesy of Stacey Maggio

Maggio showcases an Emmy nominees'

gift bag, featuring her Viavo skincare

product, before heading to the red carpet.

Maggio has been spending her summers on the Island with her family since the time she was 3 years old. After graduating from the University of Colorado with a communications degree, she eventually moved out to California, where she began working in the marketing department at Sony Electronics. After obtaining her esthetician’s license, she decided to combine her passion for beauty with her background in marketing and launch her own beauty line.

Maggio decided to center her beauty products around Southern California, the avocado capital of the world – a niche she found came with a good reputation. Avocados consist of a natural oil that’s renowned for its skin-softening fatty acids. Chock full of vitamins A, B, D and E, avocado oil is also known for its anti-wrinkle and antioxidant properties. Having found her forte, Maggio decided to name her company after the saying viva la avocado, or “long live the avocado,” and in 2006 Viavo was born.

The business went dormant for a few years after Maggio began suffering from sarcoma of the eye, a rare, inoperable cancer. She moved back to the Island to be closer to her doctors and her family, where she laid low for a couple of years before “resurrecting” Viavo in 2010. Since then, things have been moving in an upward spiral for both Maggio and her company.

Maggio hopes the Emmys will help take her beauty products to the next level. She said having one of her best beauty products in the hands of big-name celebrities is the kind of “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” every entrepreneur dreams about.

“The best thing that could happen coming forth with this is that one of the celebrities tweets or Facebook-chats that they like my scrub, and that goes viral, to the point where my website is hit with what’s called the “Oprah Effect,” and the product becomes like a household name overnight. The branding market with this opportunity is beyond my wildest dreams,” she said.

Although Maggio doesn’t expect to leave the Jersey Shore anytime soon, she hopes to take her company from the Garden State to the Golden State within the next three to five years.

“Have you ever lived in the Golden State? It’s called that for a reason. It’s incredible out here; I dream about it. It’s Long Beach Island on steroids, all year-round!” she gushed.

Maggio’s first step in getting back to California full-time includes offering Viavo to the Luxe Hotel and the Beverly Hilton as an exclusive product until the end of the year. She’s also vowed to convert Viavo into a completely organic product line by the end of this summer.

“There’s a national trend growing toward organic products, and I need to pay attention to that organic market because people are moving in that direction,” Maggio remarked.

Viavo beauty products can be found locally at Firefly and Tiffany’s Salon & Spa in Surf City; Dejavu Nails in Ship Bottom; Tula the Boutique and Make-n-Scents in Beach Haven; Lather Me Body, Bath & Barber Shop in Manahawkin; and at Luxe Day Spa in Egg Harbor Township. For more information about Viavo, visit viavo.net.

This article was published in The SandPaper.