We recently connected with Charlene Hoffman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Charlene, thanks for joining us today. Any thoughts about whether to ask friends and family to support your business. What’s okay in your view?

I have been very lucky in my community. My friends are my biggest supporters. My friends support my business in so many ways. I have been lucky enough to have a community that shares information about local markets, posts on their social media and tell their friends, family about my products. My friends are always willing to lend a hand when i need help. My family all support me and are willing to do anything to help me build my business

Charlene, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am Charlene, i am 35 and opened Sirens Tail 6 years ago. I have always loved bath and spa products but found a lot of commercial products would leave me broken out and itchy. I found myself looking into the ingredients and doing a ton of research on what caused irritiation and reactions. After this I started making a simple sugar scrub, using sugar, essential oils and coconut oil. From there I learned benefits of other oils and started tweaking my recipe. I learned how to make bath bombs and started making products based off of what natural ingredients I could use. I started selling my simple scrubs and bath bombs, over time I started making soaps and upgraded my recipes. Today we sell soap, shampoo & conditioner bars, sugar scrubs, shower steamers and bath bombs. My products blend my desire to be skin loving with my fandoms.

How’d you meet your business partner?

About a year into making bath products my then best friend told me she needed an order for another friend, she had alot of skin issues and the mutual friend had gifted her with some of my bath bombs. I started talking with Danielle as she wanted to see if i could customize products for her needs. After a while she would come hang out as i was making orders and offered to help me as the demand for items increased. During 2020 she found herself unemployed while I was struggling to keep up. She started helping me with markets and making products. In late 202o Stephanie my long time friend started helping as well handling some marketing and our social media. When I launched my LLC we decided to launch together so we could all succeed. We launched our website in 2021 to a smashing success as our business has grown they have both taken on different aspects of it while I’ve focused on creative aspects and work markets.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

100% of our products are made by my team. I have spent the past 5 years perfecting my recipes, joined several online communities for makers to trouble shoot issues. I have watched hundreds of hours of other makers making products until I felt i was ready to do so myself. I have purchased recipes and been lucky enough to have a mentor to guide me through some of the problems that arose. I have learned that simple is best when it comes to making. I have tried overly complicated designs, or molds that i was sure would be a big seller. They took extra time and the effort could have been utilized in other ways as my best sellers are simple classics.

Contact Info:

• Website: Thesirenstail.com
• Instagram: Sirenstailcrafts
• Facebook: Facebook.com/sirentail