We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Martha Van Inwegen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Martha , thanks for joining us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

In the context of our business, I have to say that we are so grateful for every single first-time customer who buys our products. To me, that means another human has chosen to trust our products and give them a try. Just the fact that they are trusting their body with our products represents the highest ideal of kindness. With that single act, we have an opportunity to help and please someone who is trying to solve a problem. We now have an opportunity to pay that first trusting step with our own form of kindness by providing excellent customer service, a premium product that I formulated and made with my own hands (and some of our team) to create something that brings relief and joy. It is a full circle experience, especially when a customer provides feedback (good or bad…but mostly 5 star reviews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) which continuously fuels us to keep doing what were doing…

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Life Elements is a Latina, woman-owned, award-winning formulator of nature-based skin & body care products that are good for you and kind to the earth. Our products are rooted in the use of ancient ingredients and proprietary blends handcrafted in our Atascadero, California production facility. Life Elements offers hemp-based CBD and non-CBD products for the entire family.

We use California-sourced honey, beeswax, lavender, and other botanicals. We work directly with many local, family-run farms to ensure quality, freshness and sustainability. We use no synthetic ingredients.

Life Elements products have been featured in Refinery 29, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Bustle, Byrdie and other media and used in Spas around the country. You’ll find our products in small to medium regional retailers around the country and overseas.

Martha, Owner and President, grew up in Mexico, in a town where some of her earliest and strongest memories are hanging onto her Grandmother’s apron and learning how to make herbal salves and tinctures as a child. Fast forward past a successful career selling everything from fingerprint ID systems to starting and selling a successful technology business and finally settling here in Atascadero with her husband Curt, in 2004.

Inspiration came fast from the various local wineries, farmers, bakers, cheesemakers and other artisans that fueled her to leave a sales gig and follow her passion to create the company that is now Life Elements.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Sometimes you just have to pivot. Over the course of our almost 20 year reign, we have changed our business model at least 4 times, but never changing our values that we will continue to formulate the cleanest, safest and best nature-based ingredients for our customers.

Lesson #1 — As a startup CPG (consumer product goods) business, DO NOT over invest in inventory. We did that early on selling premium aromatherapy products to high end resorts & spas. When the market imploded in 2007, our customers cut back and we were left with a TON of extra inventory that we had to dump.

Lesson #2 — Seek out mentors. I reached out (actually stalked) a very successful local businessman to get some help. Here’s what he did: Out of the dozen SKU’s we had, one was a body wipe. This was our ticket to differentiation and that turned into a great run for us to the point where our product: Action Wipes was being used by over 300 Fire Departments around the world to help reduce the chance of cancer by removing carcinogens from their skin after fires.

Lesson #3 — You need ROCK-SOLID agreements that protect every aspect of your IP. Our contract manufacturer of Action Wipes colluded with their private equity investor to extract a good deal of information about our fire industry customers and revenue projections and flooded the market with their own hastily branded products.

Lesson #4 — The 80/20 rule is still very valid. 20% of our products generate 80% of our DTC revenue and the same ratio applies to our retailer partners. Focus on those leaders and cull the rest, It’s a business decision and not an emotional choice.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

A clear set of ethos, honesty, impeccable customer care and a quality product have all contributed to a 50%+ repeat customer order metric. We’ve been forthcoming about challenges thru customer communications that seems to resonate with customers and prospects. We have a single survey question for 1st time buyers and we often see the response to be: “We like your products and want to support a local business,” even though the customer is from another state or part of the country!

We also find that no matter how beautiful our photography is, the highest performing posts or emails are the ones that feature people…not products. Seems much more relatable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lifeelements.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/life.elements/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifeelements
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifeelements/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB6rNiRV2ROTOhZk5DlUvMg

Image Credits

Mark Christy
Stephan Werk
Jen Olson
Yvette Roman