Secrets de Miel: From a family beekeeping legacy to a business for 3,000 women

“I was born into a pot of honey,” is a line Elise Hernaez-Iweins has said so often that it’s become her signature. As a fifth-generation beekeeper, honey wasn’t just part of her childhood – it shaped how she saw the world.

Today, that legacy lives on as Secrets de Miel – a natural beauty and wellness brand built on the same bee-derived ingredients Elise grew up with: honey, royal jelly, propolis, pollen, and beeswax.

She launched the brand in 2011 with just 30 products. Today, it has evolved into a collection of 170, spanning skincare, haircare, food supplements, and family wellness – proudly made in France.

A business built on genuine relationships

Behind each Secrets de Miel product is Elise’s desire to carry generations of knowledge forward and place it in more hands.

For her, the products have always been inseparable from how they’re experienced and shared. That’s why she chose not to follow traditional retail routes.

Elise built a direct-selling model, partnering with independent conseillères (ambassadors) rather than placing her products in supermarkets or department stores. It’s a slower approach, but more deliberate and deeply human.

The conseillères introduce products through workshops, demonstrations, personal recommendations, and social media – then earn directly from their own sales, building income on their own terms.

Opening the hive

For Elise, the focus of building Secrets de Miel has always been on what the brand enables others to do.

“I am living proof that any woman can start a business from zero,” Elise said. “What this model offers is the chance to build something without having to take risks alone.”

Today, Secrets de Miel has 3,000 ambassadors who come from all walks of life. Some were searching for flexibility. Others for a purpose. Many simply wanted to build something of their own.

“Secrets de Miel isn’t just me,” Elise recounted. “It’s this community of women building something together. Seeing their passion and their independence, that’s the most beautiful recognition I could ask for.”

The events she organizes with her ambassadors say it best – a room full of women, and everything the business has made possible, right there in front of her.

Supporting the hive at scale

When Secrets de Miel launched in 2011, it relied solely on word of mouth. The website came four years later – initially as a simple digital catalog.

By then, Elise’s husband, Arnaud Iweins, had joined her to lead operations and technical management, including the website. As the brand expanded and the platform became essential to how ambassadors worked, they evolved by adding ecommerce functionality.

But their hosting at that time couldn’t handle the load. Even after upgrading their plan, performance still fell short. So, Elise and Arnaud paused and reassessed what their website truly needed to support the business.

“We studied many providers, and Hostinger was the best,” Elise recalled. Today, the business runs on Hostinger’s Cloud Enterprise plan, powered by WordPress and WooCommerce.

For Arnaud, who manages the technical side without a dedicated IT background, usability mattered just as much as loading speed. Hostinger’s dashboard gave him a single, intuitive place to manage files, monitor the site, and make changes. 

Features like one-click staging let him clone the entire production site in about 15 minutes, test changes safely, and push them live with confidence.

And when more complex challenges arose, support was available via live chat with specialists who didn’t just fix the problem but also explained it.

With hundreds of products, thousands of ambassador accounts, and years of accumulated content, that combination of control and backup made scaling manageable.

“Migrating to Hostinger was an easy decision,” Elise added. “And with their dashboard, managing our website feels effortless.”

Beyond the storefront, it’s where the whole story lives

“Our website lets us share our story and our natural products with the world,” Elise explained. “But more importantly, it acts as a central hive for our network of over 3,000 ambassadors.”

Those ambassadors are the heart of the business. Each one runs her own personalized digital boutique, builds her own client base, and earns independently – not as an employee, but as an entrepreneur.

Secrets de Miel’s website was built to strengthen that relationship.

Customers can explore products online, but when they’re ready to buy, their conseillère remains part of the journey. Smart attribution ensures every interaction is tied back to the right ambassador, keeping that connection intact even in a digital space.

Only about 5% of sales occur directly on the website. On paper, that might seem small. In reality, it means the other 95% stays exactly where Elise wanted them – between the ambassadors and the clients.

“Our website traces our entire history,” Elise said. It shows how products are made, the stories of ambassadors, and everything they’ve built together. It’s not just an online store. It’s a living archive.

Years of content – product stories, beekeeping knowledge, the ambassadors’ journeys – are structured so visitors can discover, understand, and connect. It’s what allows someone who has never heard of the brand to not only find it, but also feel like they already know it.

For generations to come

Elise thinks in long timelines. When your family has worked with bees for over a century, you naturally do.

What she’s building is more than just a business – it’s a different way of consuming and creating. More natural. More thoughtful. More connected to the source.

Her commitment to bees is inseparable from her commitment to the environment.

“What I want to leave for future generations is the ability to care for themselves naturally,” she said, “while respecting the biodiversity around us. Supporting bees means supporting a greener world.”

It started with honey. It became a business. Now, it’s something bigger – a community, a philosophy, and a legacy being passed on, one product, one story, and one woman at a time.