We recently connected with Colton Hasart and Zachary Pierce and have shared our conversation below.
Colton and Zachary, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
As many of us did in the early days of the pandemic, we spent a lot of time on YouTube. Down the rabbit hole went until we landed on soap making videos. One of our favorite content creators, Katie Carson of Royalty Soaps, recommended a soap making kit for beginners. We ordered a kit and got to work! Our first batch was very successful and we couldn’t wait to make more. After several more batches we had an abundance of soaps and decided to open up an Etsy shop and sell them. We sold out in the first week and knew we were onto something. We knew we wanted to highlight our products as handcrafted, vegan and from a queer-owned business. Over the next year we began attending flea markets and farmers markets and the reception from our customers was phenomenal. During that time we added several more products, scented candles, bath bombs, beard oils and lip balms. We now have a dedicated customer base that visit us at our markets as well as our online store www.rainbrocrafts.com.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
We are a queer couple that live in Vancouver Washington. Colton has a background in Human Resources and business administration while Zac has a background in food service and sourcing. We combined our individual skills and passion for vegan handcrafted bath and body products to form RainBro Crafts. Our mission is to make the world a little bit gayer, greener, and cleaner. Our product line consists of vegan soaps, scented candles, bath bombs, beard oils, shampoo bars and lip balms. We’ve identified a target market of customers who are looking for high quality self-care products that align with their values while still being affordable. We ensuring that all of our products are:
-Vegan
-Cruelty-free
-Made with with ethically and sustainably-sourced ingredients
-Minimally packaged with recyclable packaging only
We believe that every dollar spent is a vote for a company to keep doing what they are doing. Our customers continually vote for our vision of a more compassionate and sustainable future.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Colton remained fully employed throughout COVID, working from our home office. He used his government stimulus checks and tax return to start our business in January of 2021. This was just what we needed to get things started though we did rack up some startup expenses in the first year. Thanks to the warm reception and support from our amazing customers we were able to pay off all of our startup costs in June of 2022 and were able to start paying ourselves.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Our most effective strategy for growing our clientele is to go where the customers are. We attend Farmers Markets, Flea Markets, Vegan and Queer events and let our products speak for themselves. The chances of a customer making a purchase increase significantly once they pick up our product and smell it for themselves. Attending these events allows us to form a connection and tie it to a sensory experience for each of our customers. Everytime they use our products, the fragrance brings them back to the wonderful connection we formed that day at the market. We have been able to build a loyal base of return customers with this strategy. To expand our customer base outside of the Vancouver/Portland area we are focusing on launching our YouTube channel as well as our monthly subscription program.
Contact Info:
-
Website: www.rainbrocrafts.com
-
Instagram: @rainbrocrafts
-
Facebook: www.facebook.com/
RainBroCrafts/ - Youtube: www.youtube.com/@
rainbrocrafts9420 -
Other: Email: [email protected]
Image Credits
Colton Hasart and Zachary Pierce