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

Edie Ann, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It was February of 2017. I took my mother in for her yearly mammogram. I was sitting in the waiting room when the technician came out to ask the receptionist to get in touch with my mom’s Dr because they needed to do another scan. I could tell something was wrong. I couldn’t hold back the tears. She had had ductile breast cancer back in 1999/2000, but it was caught early and she only needed surgery. Back then, Drs didn’t know it could show up years later in the opposite breast. We were devastated! I had played around with making an itch cream for my mother while she was going through chemotherapy. But didn’t think about making something for radiation until we had her first appointment with her radiation oncologist. Her Dr went through all that can happen to the skin during radiation and when she got to what they suggest to use, I was shocked! I used that stuff on my tattoos. It wasn’t soothing. It was sticky and thick. So I asked if her Dr minded if I tried making her a cream specifically for her to use during radiation. She gave me the go ahead with one request, it can’t be astringent. When we got home, I went right into research mode. The formula I came up with is the formula we use to this day.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I originally went to college to be a teacher, but going to my first major concert changed all of that. I was fascinated with the sound booth more than the musicians. So I started looking into what the sound guys did and decided that’s what I wanted to do.. Growing up, music was always an important part of my life. If it was between getting makeup or a new cassett tape of one of my favorite bands, it was the cassette tape, haha. I’m definitely dating myself there. I worked in the music industry for 7 years as an assistant engineer and for the school I graduated from. It was exciting, but didn’t care for the business side of the industry. We had decided to move out of California to Texas and I decided to do something different.
When we got to Texas, my sister and I took a bartending class. It was something we had always wanted to do. We worked a few parties, had a blast, but realized it wasn’t what either of us wanted to do full time. So back to the drawing board and taking a job that was rewarding, but not a passion. So customer service type jobs it was.
Growing up, our mother had always looked into herbal remedies and I had kept it up but hadn’t really done much with it until 2017. Since developing Goodwin’s Skin Soother, I’ve developed 5 other products and am working on a few others. It’s become my passion because I get to research how to help others and put out products that really work with all natural ingredients. Our products have less than 10 ingredients, no fillers and no harsh chemicals.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My business partner is my sister, Stephanie Goodwin. We’ve been pretty much best friends from birth. Without her, our business would not be what it is today. She has been my rock, both emotionally and financially. I have been able to focus on our business without having to worry about the financial aspect of everyday life. She has helped me come up with products and is always ready to try new stuff.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

After my mother was done with all of the daily cancer therapies, we all took about 3 months to decompress from the stressful year we had. Cancer doesn’t just effect the patient, but those around them too. My sister and I started talking about how much the cream had helped mother and how we liked using it for our daily moisturizer and wondered if it would help others. So I took to instagram. I started our business page, @skinsoother and started following Cancer pages. Then I would reach out to people that would comment about starting radiation. I also did a post on our page looking for people who wanted to try our cream for radiation and other skin issues. We started sending out 2oz samples of our Goodwin’s Skin Soother and everyone that tried the cream loved it! They started telling others about it too. By the end of 2018, we had sent out 200 samples. People started asking when we were going to sell it. They wanted to support our business! We opened our Etsy shop on January 31, 2019 and our first customer was one of the ladies that tested our cream. We’ve had over 400 sales on Etsy, which is awesome for such a specialized product, and are working on some exciting new avenues all because of social media. Our social media isn’t huge either. But it works!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.goodwinsskinsoother.com
• Instagram: @skinsoother
• Facebook: @skinsoother
• Linkedin: Edie Goodwin

Image Credits
Jason Schwartz Edie Goodwin