Made for Nala, Built for Parents: The Rise of Krept’s Baby Empire

On 5 August 2026, Channel 4 and Lloyds Bank announced their four winners of this year’s Black in Business initiative, with each winner entitled to receive £200,000 in advertising airtime alongside a tailored business support package. One name that stood out in the press release was Casyo Johnson, popularly known as Krept, from the musical duo “Krept and Konan.”

He is the proud owner of Nala’s Baby, a skincare and haircare brand that provides natural, scientifically developed products for babies and children from newborn through childhood.

With this award in the bag, we spoke to Casyo about what motivated him to start Nala’s Baby, what challenges he faced, and what the future holds.

Nala’s Baby wasn’t initially a business idea. In 2020, not long after his daughter was born, Casyo faced a question every new parent can relate to: “What products are safe for my baby?” He and his partner at the time, Sasha Ellese Gilbert, went through many baby products they received as gifts, using rating apps like Think Dirty and Yuka and “none of them were rated well”.

He kept wondering why a safe, perfect product didn't exist. He then made a resolution to “create that brand that parents can trust, that's all about cleanliness, that's all about non-toxic ingredients, and that's all about being naturally derived.”

Starting the brand was not easy, as Casyo had to overcome a few hurdles. For skincare brands like Nala’s Baby, every claim on a product's packaging must be backed up by testing. Testing is crucial but complex. He quickly realised that testing for a single claim could be expensive. For example, proving that a product would not sting if it got into a child's eyes could cost as much as £40,000 for that test alone.

Other claims, including being suitable for sensitive skin, dermatologically approved, paediatrician approved, vegan or cruelty-free, also require separate testing and verification. “That's when it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is gonna cost a lot,’” he says.

Casyo also emphasised the importance of hiring the right people. Before Nala’s Baby, Casyo ran a restaurant business, “Crepes and Cones”, with his brother, which permanently closed down in 2022. He attributed much of the restaurant’s failure to him trying to stretch himself thin. According to him, he learned that to run a successful business, he needed to hire the right people. "I'm not making that mistake again. I'm not gonna try and do this myself again. I wanna do this properly. I wanna compete with all the biggest brands."  

By the end of lockdown, Casyo had created a product he was happy with. Now he had to convince millions of people that a musician could create a baby skincare brand they could trust. Most people knew him as one half of Krept and Konan, one of the most successful rap duos the UK has ever produced. “Actually, I had my self-doubts about being a musician bringing out baby skincare.”, Casyo admits. He thought of the best way to make people trust the products he was putting out and decided it was important to “launch this brand with a company that they trust," and that was Boots.

Boots understood Casyo’s vision, saw the gap, and decided to stock Nala Baby products in 400 stores in 2022. Nala’s Baby is now available in 800 Boots stores nationwide. Casyo continued to pitch to retailers like Tesco, Sainsbury's, Superdrug, Asda, Morrisons, and Ocado, securing listings with all of them. However, running a business comes with severe competition, especially from bigger brands. According to Casyo, the ruthlessness of bigger players surprised him. “They do things like basically duplicate or make identical products or trademark certain things so that, you know, it affects your business”, he says.

In late 2025, multiple customers accused Sainsbury’s of duplicating Nala’s Baby products.  

However, Casyo believes his years working in the music industry gave him the tools required to survive such an unpredictable environment. Like entrepreneurship, music offers no guarantees of success, often requiring artists to stay creative, market themselves on limited budgets, and persevere. “You've always gotta be consistent. You've always gotta champion through. You've always gotta figure things out. You've always gotta keep powering on,” he says. For Casyo, those lessons gave him the resilience needed to navigate the challenges of building Nala’s Baby in a very competitive industry.

According to Casyo, the Channel 4 x Lloyds Black in Business initiative will help Nala’s Baby compete with bigger brands. Now, Nala’s Baby has a chance to compete nationally against a lot of other competitors that “are owned by big conglomerates and have much bigger budgets.” The grant also includes a bespoke TV campaign created by Quiet Storm, founded by Trevor Robinson OBE, which Casyo is keen to use. “I feel like it's very important and has a lot of synergy in terms of what the campaign actually is about and the initiative is about.”

He adds, “We're championing Black-owned businesses to get a fair shot and compete with other brands and put brands like ours on a level playing field.” Through the initiative, Quiet Storm has collaborated with other black brands, including Floral & Curl, Nylah’s Naturals, Flake Bake, and Alonuko.  

The grant award is one of Nala’s Baby’s many successes. In 2024, the brand collaborated with Disney for the release of the film Mufasa: The Lion King, which Casyo describes as “a surreal moment”. Nala’s Baby was listed number 10 in The Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing businesses in the UK in 2025. The brand has also won the Mother and Baby Awards for four consecutive years.

Casyo’s ambitions for Nala’s Baby extend far beyond skincare. His vision is to make the brand a “destination baby” company, offering parents everything from toiletries and gifting to teethers, comforters and household products. The brand is already moving into adjacent categories, with the upcoming launch of its 100% organic, unbleached cotton wool marking another step beyond skincare.

For Casyo, the goal is clear: build a brand that becomes a trusted destination for parents across every aspect of baby care.