The Indie Experience
July 23, 2007
A Publication of The Indie Beauty Network
ISSN 1530-9630 | Volume 8, Issue 29
To subscribe, click here
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1. Meet IBN's New Members
2. New At the Blog: The Indie Business Trifecta
3. This Week On Indie Business Radio: Live What You Love!
4. Indie Candy: Joanna Schmidt: Product Body
Indie Beauty Ritual: Cucumber Kaolin Mask
1. Meet IBN's New Members
Welcome
New Members!
Sweetwater | Sharon Spangenberg | Virginia
* Maker of handmade soaps, candles, herbal products, wreaths,
ornaments, sachets, etc.
Asiana | Susan Kim | California
* Inspired by the tropics of Asia, home to world renowned spas,
Asiana presents at home spa therapy treatments combining functional and the
highest quality Natural and Organic ingredients influenced by tropical Asia
and the West to deliver modern, effective and results driven skin care and
bath and body for healthy, radiant, and beautiful skin.
Yafa's Good Dirt | Yafa Lamm | New York
* Yafa’s Good Dirt: Natural Skin Care Products from the Ground Up.
Created by a soil scientist, we know the real “dirt” on Mother Nature.
Developed from natural herbs and oils grown in rich soils, our products
nourish, heal, protect and beautify hair and skin. Our line includes lip
balms for cold sore relief, children’s care products, sunburn, skin
rashes, hair repair, pet care, herbal insect repellents, and products for
new mothers.
Healing
Concepts Essential Oils Therapies | Diane Giddings | Iowa
* Healing Concepts Essential Oil Therapies is dedicated to providing
only the highest quality of essential oils, hydrolats and carrier oils that
are certified organic &/or preservative/chemical free. Our work with a
variety of health care settings has brought an increasing awareness of the
success of natural interventions when addressing comfort and emotional
issues related to the healing process and/or palliative care needs.
Om
Aroma & Co. | Angela Kim | New York
* Om Aroma & Co. is a luxury organic cosmetic product and spa
treatment company.
House
of Rhondus | Cathleen Michaels-Brader | California
* Ancient Stones uses only the purest ingredients. We have a line of
cosmetics for women of all colors. We have over 50 eye shadows, 22
foundations, 9 blushes and 2 concealers. Our patent pending
Ancient Elixir keeps your makeup fresh all day long. The combining of the
minerals and the elixir, allows the skin to breath while being fully
protected from the environment. Ancient Stones Mineral Makeup:: “Beautifying
the World One Woman at a Time!"
Neem Tree Farms | Vicki Parsons | Florida
* We planted our first neem trees in 1992 and have grown (pun
intended!) to be the largest grower of neem in the US. Along with living
trees that thrive in sunny windows even in cold climates, we manufacture a
line of all-natural neem products and work with other manufacturers to carry
a full line of neem products primarily sold through our website. We also offer raw materials and private-labeling for
other small businesses.
Bourne
In Style | Sharon Bourne | Texas
* Bourne In Style offers handmade soaps and other body products.
Enjoy a whole body and soul makeover naturally, delight your senses and
moisturize your skin. Pamper yourself as if you were
Body Divine | Michelle Hurd | Texas
* Body Divine natural skin products have been developed over the
years to promote healthy skin. Our ingredients and essential oils are
selected for the benefits they bring to you through your skin and
aromatherapy. We also provide workshops to help you make better choices
about your skin care products. Soaps, bath salts, moisturizers, scrubs and
masks are available. Let our high standards and beautiful products take care
of your skin. You will feel better and have healthier skin!
The Fragrant Farm | Vanessa Bell | Washington
* Lavender based personal care products.
Tiffany Newman | California
Apprentice Indie
Just Makes Scents | Barbara Barat | North Carolina
* Hand-poured candles, specializing in bakery type items.
The BaSIX and Beyond | Sharon Prendergrast | New
York
* The BaSIX and beyond is located in New York City. We provide
personal care and wellness products to consumers worldwide. Our natural and
organic bath and body products offer all the goodness nature has to offer.
Island Sista Bath and Body, LLC | Deborah Robinson
| Maryland
* We invite you to take time out to Celebrate You, Create a Refreshed New You, Enjoy You, Love You. Our Natural and Organic Bath and Body care products are fresh and pure, inspired by the islands, created with you in mind. Love yourself with our selection of Moisturizers, Cleansers, Fragrances, Gift Collection and much more.
Indie Business For Sale!
IBN member Susan Kim is selling
Asiana! The company has been in business for 2
years, and the owner is transferring all website, copyrights, trademarks, formulations, inventory, customer lists, etc. to the new owner. Serious inquiries only to
the website or call. (Update as of 2/20/08): this business has
been sold so the opportunity is no longer available.)
Learn more about Indie members and their exciting products, services and
activities by visiting their websites through our Online
Member Directory. You can search for your favorite Indie by
state/country, business name, keyword or alphabetical listings.
2. New At the Blog: Blogs of Interest to the Indie Beauty Community
Blogs
of special interest to the Indie Beauty community:
Indie
Business Trifecta: The triple crown of "things to do"
Buy
One, Get One Free: How to give customers the freebies they want
What
To Do When Your Fitness Routine Fails You: You never know what you'll
find on the side of the road
3. This Week on Indie Business Radio: Live What You Love!
Indie Business Radio offers practical advice and workable strategies to achievement-oriented, independent entrepreneurs who are trading in the traditional corporate ladder to enjoy life and business on their own terms. Enjoy downloads and audio streams of recent shows at this link. The show has been on hiatus for a few weeks and will return next week with another great guest.
While
our
show engineer is on vacation, we are on hiatus until next week when I'll be back with IBN member Jena Thompson! Email your questions
for Jena on how to have a great home party business to info@indiebusinessradio.com.
To enjoy one of my favorite shows -- guests Bob and Mel Blanchard on "Living What You Love," click here.
Upcoming Shows:
July 30: IBN's own Jena Thompson of Daisy Blue Naturals on how to grow a
home party business (confirmed)
August 6: Aliza Sherman, The Who, What, Where, When and How of
Blogging (confirmed)
"I Love Indie Business Radio! "
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4. Indie Candy: Joanna Schmidt: Product Body
The world sometimes has a way of making you think that if you don't get it right the first time, there's something wrong with you. Yet the adage that we should "try try again" if we don't succeed the first time around offers hope to anyone trying to make a success of business on their own -- and so does today's tasty candy treat. I first met Joanna Schmidt a few years ago when she joined IBN under another company name. Things just weren't right so she revamped the whole shebang and this time, is going stronger than ever at Product Body. No matter where you are in your venture, but especially if you are thinking of doing some things over and better, Joanna's journey will encourage you.
How did you start your business and what was the inspiration for it?
I was living in New York and going through the typical brutal cold, dry winters not very gracefully. The weather took quite a toll on my
skin. It was dry and cracked, sometimes so badly, I felt wounded. I tried every lotion I walked past in the drug store or department store. All of them felt like they just sat on my skin. I never really got the “deep moisturizing vitamin enriched” result that was promised on
the labels. When a good friend of mine started to make and sell her handmade cold process soap, it occurred to me that I didn't HAVE to be at the mercy of companies that were claiming the ultimate cure for my skin; endless creams, none of which really felt any good to me or smelled like old ladies wearing way too much perfume. Perhaps I could begin formulating something really effective myself.
The thought energized me. I craved information on skin care and soaked up everything I could learn, wherever I could learn it. On the computer after the kids were in bed, magazines, books, people in the beauty business - it didn’t
matter. I learned everything I could. It was a ton of information (some good, some really bad) that took me a good few months to process and sort
out. Then I located suppliers of raw materials and I began experimenting.
At first, it was not a pretty sight. A lot batches went into the garbage,
only a few made it to the skin of my family and friends. But I hung in there
and requested brutally honest feedback from everyone that tried my
creations, and I slowly began to create things that felt luscious, smelled
good -- and worked! It was hard work. The amount of information I took in and number of test trials I ran were daunting. The formulations didn't come quickly, but I knew what I wanted and was determined to get it right.
What did you do before embarking on this one-woman beauty journey?
I graduated from Antioch College with a degree in Education. I worked with abused and neglected children in Boston and
Dayton, Ohio before I moved back to New York City where I was raised.
I got a corporate job at a prominent promotions/sweepstakes company an hour outside of the
city. The commute was killing me so after a year, I went to work at a gorgeous
art gallery in Soho. I got married in 1996, my daughter was born in 1997 and that was the end of me in the workplace until I began formulating.
You changed the name of your company from its original name. Tell me
about that.
When I first decided to listen to friends and family and form a company to sell my formulations, it was called Shashy Bodycare. Shashy is a made up word between my husband and I and used it as a tongue-in-cheek giggle. I had no idea what I was doing and I didn’t get into magazines or get reviews, I didn’t market myself past my own nose, etc. Everyone who looked at the label mispronounced the name (sha-shy?, sha-shay? sashay?) I thought it would be an easy name to remember and to say, but I was dead wrong. It rhymes with “flashy” people!
Fast forward a bit and all of a sudden we are getting some really good responses to the formulations. My husband signed on to help with marketing and back-end business processes and we
realized that if we were going to make a real go of it the name HAD to change. We were thinking of all sorts of names, none of which were what we wanted, when my good friend Melissa said to me one day, almost off the cuff, “why don’t you just call the company
Product?” because I kept using the name “product” when referring to my stuff. I loved it, it stuck, and Product Body came to be. We had a name! And we were off, almost starting over: we reformulated, redesigned, and researched ways to market and spread the word. We entered the market with our new formulations, name and image just about a year ago.
Do you make any of your products yourself?
I am involved with every aspect of this business so you can catch me working formulations every chance I get! My husband’s got the design talent in the family and he writes all the copy for our website and jar labels.
Scrubs seem to be a big thing at Product Body. What is special about your
scrubs?
I got into scrubs when I discovered how well they worked for me. I started with sugar, added a salt scrub and then thought about how I could expand the scrub concept. That lead to the creation of Butter Scrub which adds pure cocoa butter to a minimally processed sugar scrub. No added scent at all - the natural products made it smell luscious and its success underscored that my decision to stress natural, minimally processed and freshly formulated products was sound. The popularity of the scrubs prompted us to sell it in bulk for back bar use in spas, where it has been really well received.
Tell me more about your products.
Our most unique, best selling and my personal
favorite scrub though is
Crush On You. I thought of the formulation while I was lying in bed with a horrible fever and migraine, and while it may not be a traditional scrub it
cleans and pampers without feeling oily. The sugar and shea in Crush provide wonderful scrubbing and moisturizing, but the pH-balanced wash that holds those ingredients in suspension rinses you off incredibly cleanly. I have a jar of it at every single sink in my house and in every shower. I use it at my kitchen sink the most (in lemon) because it takes lingering smells off of my hands like garlic, fish,
onions, etc. It also cleans oily or greasy hands in an instant, and I am all about instant gratification.
Tell me how you are working the "going green" theme into
your business.
When it was time to re-order our jars, someone brought to our attention that they were not marked with a recycling symbol, which some areas require for recycling. Frankly at the time I thought all plastic was recyclable, but after doing some research decided that we needed to switch to more commonly recycled plastic that was marked with the proper symbol to help minimize our impact on the environment.
The jars are not as stunning as the ones we used to use, but I feel it is the right thing to do and it fits more with who we are. Bonus: the jars hold more product so our customers get more for their money while we all help cut down on waste.
What's it like to work closely in business with your husband?
It’s formal and informal. Do we have titles, yeah, sure, but we all wear many hats everyday. We divide up duties by focusing on our strengths and by trying to do what we can when we can.
Thankfully we have very complimentary skill sets. My husband does the marketing, design, financial analysis, business planning and a million other things.
I focus on formulating, filling jars, labeling, cleaning up, email, order
processing and making nice with magazines.
It can be hard to work together sometimes, but I think that is true for everyone in the workplace, not just those of us that work with our spouses. It’s really important to remember that work isn’t life: we maintain a deep level of respect for each other and try hard to keep issues that may come up in the office out of the house. Bottom line is that we love each other regardless of what mood our business partner may have been in that day.
What tips can you offer to other moms in business?
I'm 37 and my kids are 10 and 7. They are the most amazing people in my life and I have grown incredibly from knowing them.
Make sure that that the sacrifices you make don’t stop you from being a mom. Go to their school to help out for the Halloween Activity Centers or show up for their Field Day or participate a few times a year at school and definitely without pause, make sure you snuggle them at night.
Tell me about your blog?
It was a group decision here that it would be interesting for people to read about the inner working of a woman owned business, so I decided to start the blog, but after a little while I became bored with only writing about business and had to spice it up with some personal things. I blog as often as I can (and not as often as I should or as often as I want to).
The blog has not changed the way I do business, but it has enhanced it. We have always solicited our customers’ opinions and thoughts, and the blog has been great in that respect. I might mention something I’m thinking about, and readers might comment or email me with their thoughts. I love direct contact with our customers and fans, and the blog can really help facilitate that. I would recommend it to people as a way to interact with customers, a way to help empty your head and a way to share with folks - but only if you can make the time to update it regularly and are comfortable with opening up to anyone that happens to land on it.
What tips do you have for other people who might want to start a business?
Plan, plan, plan - but not at the expense of acting. It’s a fine line - you don’t want to jump in and do something counter productive, but at the same time, too much thought can block any action at all. In this way my husband and I complement each other quite well - he loves to analyze things to death and I love to jump in without looking. I get him to act, and he gets me to act with forethought.
What are the best things about doing what you do?
The responses I get from customers that tell me I’ve changed their lives. That and the feeling of coming up with a new formulation that I am really proud of.
I also have to say that my skin is soft and supple... Something I never felt before I started this.
What are the biggest challenges and how do you overcome them?
Balancing work and home life which I have no real formula for. It’s a day by day struggle that I get really right some days and terribly wrong others. By keeping things in perspective and understanding what’s truly important though, I think I have more really right days that really wrong.
Bootstrapping a business is very tough. No one came along and gave me a million dollars to try and do
this. We are building it brick by brick, by hand. We have to be very thoughtful about where and how we spend our limited resources (both money and labor) so that the things that really need attention get it while those that can wait get put on hold. It requires weekly (sometimes daily) reassessment and regular meetings that ask where we are, where we need to be, and what we are focusing on. Mostly it requires patience,
flexibility and an ability to see the “big picture” while still being able to focus on whatever task is in front of you. Creative solutions to troubling problems are helpful too. For example, we knew that we would be changing formulations and scents a lot in the early days, so we produce all of our labels in-house to avoid spending thousands of dollars on labels that might become obsolete next week.
Why do you love being Indie?
Being indie (as in an independent business) allows me to produce products I truly believe in and release them only when I have exactly what I know we should be making. This isn’t always the case in businesses where you might get a lot of pressure to perform NOW regardless of the product that goes out the door. I have really enjoyed being in IBN.
From tips to feeling like a part of a wonderful community, it has been a really positive experience. Just knowing there are other folks out there fighting the same battles and struggling with the same issues is encouraging.
When you're not working Product Body, what are you doing?
Family. Taking the kids to the beach, family Marco Polo in a pool, movies, dinner with my husband (when we can find a sitter). I also still love working in the formulary on new products and learning about the properties of natural products I haven’t worked with yet. I know that could be considered work, but I really do love it.
My husband and I are also big fans of independent cinema. We do Netflix to get all the films they don’t stock at
Blockbuster (last month was Asian horror month!)
What business book have you enjoyed lately that has helped you in business and why?
Go Put Your Strengths To Work by Marcus Buckingham is all about working to your strengths and
delegating your weaknesses to someone for whom they are strengths. The revelation is that your strengths aren’t necessarily what you do well, they’re what you feel strong and invigorated doing. The book helps me to understand why I do (or avoid) different things in business (and life).
What's on the horizon for Product Body?
Well - hopefully continued growth and an expansion of products in our line. We are also launching an entire new line of products this fall - I can’t really say much about it right now except that it has come about as a result of feedback on one of our current products, will be targeted at a very specific market, and will be unique in that market. I promise
you’ll be first to know though!
You can learn more about Joanna and Product Body's great line of products at their website.
Best & Success!!
Donna Maria
Editor, The Indie Experience
The Indie Beauty Network | www.indiebeauty.com
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2007 by The Indie Beauty Network (IBN) and Donna Maria. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized distribution or reproduction is prohibited. IBN does not necessarily endorse any product, event or ideology featured in The Handmade Beauty Connection (HBC) or on IBN's website. All information is provided on an "as is" basis and no express or implied warranties are given. Any use of the information contained in the HBC or on IBN's web site, including recipes, is solely at your own risk. IBN and Donna Maria disclaim any liability in connection with the use of all recipes, products reviewed and other information. Except for sponsorships, HBC refuses compensation from companies to feature or mention their names or products. Opinions expressed in any Product Review are personally those of the reviewer and do not represent the views of IBN, Donna Maria (unless she is the reviewer) or any other person or company.
