We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cassandra Burnvoth. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cassandra below.

Cassandra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I first read the book “It Starts With Food” back in 2012, and I also did my first “Whole30” that same year. Eating Paleo changed my life! I felt better and had a ton more energy! As I started paying more attention to the foods that I was putting into my body, I also started paying a lot more attention to the products that I was using ON my body. I started taking a deeper dive into the products I was using on a daily basis (shampoo, body wash, makeup, etc) and realized that many of these products were full of toxic chemicals and dangerous ingredients. So, I started making many of my own natural personal care products, and FATCO was born!

Around the same time I started learning more about the benefits of using tallow (AKA rendered beef fat) topically, and I slowly started integrating this incredibly healing ingredient into my recipes. Tallow is incredible for your skin in so many ways! When sourced responsibly, It’s extremely nourishing & nutrient dense, and is healing for skin conditions like eczema & psoriasis. I have seen the most amazing before and after photos of real-life customers who choose our natural balms to treat their skin conditions over using things like toxic steroid creams, with amazing success!

Society has become so “fat-phobic” and “oil phobic” that we have lost sight of everything else. We have had it ingrained in us since a young age that you must wash your face twice a day, with harsh cleansers or expensive scrubs in order to have beautiful skin. But, our skin is an amazing organ, and if we could just leave our skin alone for 5 minutes and let it do it’s thing, we would be amazed at how well it can function! The oil cleansing method allows your skin to re-balance itself and get back to neutral. Fats and oils are NOT the enemy! And we strive to teach our customers about the benefits of using oils and fats (including animal fats) on their skin daily!

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.

I am a mechanical engineer who decided to start a skincare company. Before I started my business, I had worked in large scale automotive manufacturing for about 10 years. My company dealt mostly in injection molding and PCB assembly. I like to joke that I was a super-nerd by day, and that making skincare products in my kitchen was just a fun hobby, and something I enjoyed doing in my free time! At the time I was living in San Diego, and I was an avid runner, cyclist and yogi. I made skincare products for a long time as a hobby, but only in 2014 did I decide to turn it into a business.

At FATCO, we specialize in making natural & organic personal care products using tallow (aka rendered beef fat) from grass-fed, pasture raised, happy cows! Tallow is extremely nourishing & nutrient dense, and is healing for skin conditions like eczema & psoriasis. We also carry a full line of Cleansing Oils and Deodorants, thus offering products for everyone in your family!

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

I think using email and SMS marketing is critical nowadays. When I started my business in 2014, getting organic social media engagement/followers was easy, but this is so different now. I think that keeping an email list is still the best way to stay engaged with your customers, and it provides you with an (almost) free way to remain connected and stay in touch with your customers.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that having a social media presence is still critical. I think it adds a layer of legitimacy, and without a social media presence, customers might question if you’re a “real” company or not. But in my opinion, unless you’re prepared to be extremely active on those channels (ie, you’re a content creator at heart), you need to continue to foster your email + SMS lists. We still remain active on social media, but we don’t get nearly as much web traffic from there as we do from our email and SMS marketing.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One word of advice is to hire a good Trademark attorney in the very beginning.

When I launched the brand in 2014, we launched as FatFace Skincare. In early 2015, I received a letter from another company with the same name. They were much larger than we were, and while they didn’t specialize in skincare, they wanted to start making conventional lip balms and lotions under the same name, so they essentially told us we needed to stop using the name FatFace.

These were some of the toughest months of my life. I had just launched a brand that was doing very well, and I was essentially served a cease and desist to stop using our name. My only option was to rebrand, which was a time consuming and very costly venture. Since we were still a very small brand (compared to them) we couldn’t really afford to litigate it, so we agreed to walk away and rebrand.

In the end, the decision to rebrand ended up being for the best since I believe our new packaging and web design was even more beautiful than the original. So, it all worked out for the best!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fatco.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/fatco
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/fatcocare
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fatco-
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQgIWu7BV0BVJ86xPA8a4MA

Image Credits
Cristy Cross, GoodGood Media