We recently connected with Elaine Kinney and have shared our conversation below.
Elaine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard
I love this question because, honestly, nothing I do follows the industry standard. This is what makes my business, White Pine Bath & Brew, so unique and successful. As the owner/founder of a growing craft beer soap business, I realized early-on that the things being done by other soap manufacturers or handmade makers wouldn’t work for me. I knew that, to stand out as a product, I needed a niche. I needed to set myself apart from both the big brands that pump tons of unnecessary fillers into low-quality products as well as the home soapers that make decent cold-process soap but most of which still feels and smells the same.
That is why I use craft beer in my soap and create it using a hot-process method. While I am certainly not the first to put beer in soap, I am one of the few who specialize in it. Craft beer and skincare make a wonderful, if unexpected, pairing. There is significant overlap in the ingredients in beer and those that we want in our skincare. Hot process soaping is far less common than cold-process. It tends to be a little trickier and more volatile to carry-out successfully and is thus less beginner-friendly. Equipment-wise, it also is quite a bit harder to scale-up with a growing business compared to the cold-process method. I haven’t found any brands that do hot-process on a large scale, meaning that designated equipment for this type of production does not exist. I have had to trailblaze my own scale-up and try technology from other industries to see what can be borrowed and repurposed as my own production needs increase.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Elaine Kinney, and I am the owner/founder of the skincare brand White Pine Bath & Brew, founded in 2020. I design luxury, vegan, palm oil free skincare with a specialty in soap made from Maine’s craft beers. The amino acids in the hops found in beer can soothe irritation. The brewers yeast contains biotin, pantothenic acid, and a number of other essential vitamins. Beer also contributes to a more luxurious lather. Each product is designed with the concepts of quality, simplicity, and integrity in mind. I only sell products that I can be proud of and am continuously striving for greater sustainability as a business.
I made a deliberate choice to use beer exclusively from Maine’s local breweries. I fell in love with Maine’s business community years ago and knew that I wanted to become a contributing member. I wanted to create a product unique to Maine with a business model that supported other small businesses in the community–and nothing is as unique to Maine as its craft breweries. According to the Maine Brewers’ Guild in 2022, there are 100 separate brands represented by 165 breweries across the state. Why would I use just any old beer in my soap when I can work with my favorite local breweries and develop a symbiotic relationship there?
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Since starting my entrepreneurial journey, I have had a major perspective shift on failure. I always hated being bad at new things, trying them once or twice only to set them aside when I didn’t succeed. Building a business did not start any differently. I brought into it the deeply-held belief that if I messed up or didn’t know the next steps, it meant the inevitable death of my business. As dramatic as that sounds, most new business owners struggle with this same fear. We all show up with very loud imposter syndrome, leaving us no time or room to grow into the standards of success that we hold for ourselves. Realistically, though, almost no one is good at a skill right at the start. We need the string of failures to help us develop our craft.
Learning to scale up my business has brought with it a series of miniature failures, each of which I was sure would end my business dreams forever. I remember one evening in particular during a time of repeated failings. My soap batches in those days were inconsistent and unpredictable, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I had been flying through soaping equipment, part after part breaking or degrading as I tried to find new ways to meet my production needs. I found myself crying on the stairs in my house after the failure of yet another piece of equipment that I had thought was the solution to my problems. At that moment, it felt like everything I worked for, all the encouragement from friends and family, all the money and time I had invested, was going down the drain. I thought I should give up, but I didn’t. There isn’t a concise, comfortable ending to that evening. I had to sit with the failure, to remain outside of my comfort zone. It took me a long time to find a method I could reliably repeat. I got there, but as my business continues to grow, I know I will face those types of hurdles again.
The path doesn’t change. I used to think that if I could just get enough momentum, if I could just solve the current dilemma (whatever that was at the time) then the dilemmas would slow down or stop coming. I realize now that that isn’t the reality of business. Believing things will eventually stop going wrong is just setting oneself up to be discouraged. We have to change our perspective. The goal is not to avoid failure. The goal is to get comfortable with it. When we are comfortable with failing, it does not hold us back. We find solutions quicker and with less tax on our mental wellbeing. We get to reframe the narrative here. Having a business is an opportunity for personal growth. With this perspective, I can be excited for the variety of daily challenges that show up when running my business. I’m excited because I know that not only will these challenges not end my endeavors but they will develop both me and my business into something better than ever.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
Diversifying sales channels has been key since the early days of my business. Since White Pine Bath & Brew is still only a few years old, I continue to foster a variety of sales channels. The initial struggle of a new business is to develop brand recognition with a target audience and to just find ways to get products/services in front of interested customers.
I started selling on Etsy first before switching to my own website as a primary sales channel. By the time I came along, Etsy was already over-saturated with both handmade and non-handmade products, especially when it came to skincare. It no longer offered the advantage of being a curated, niche, makers-only sales channel. While I am open to trying other sales platforms, so far there are some concerns that have kept me from participating. Some platforms just feel off-brand, unethical, or take too hefty of a commission for me to sustain the partnership. However, waiting for my products to be discovered on the vast World Wide Web is not a fast method either. Without the initial skill or capital to set up effective, targeted advertising, I decided to pivot to alternative sales channels. This is when I discovered makers markets.
Maine has a wonderful community of creatives with a vast network of craft fairs, markets, and festivals for vendors to attend. While still maintaining my business website and social media, I started signing up for local markets and brewery pop-up events. There I could personally introduce my products and vision to the Maine community. It is a slow but surefire way to get in front of my target audience because I primarily cater to Maine citizens who are familiar with Maine craft beer. I even spent last summer with colleague Kayte Demont of WCKD Collective organizing an event of our own called Fête Market.
Through markets, I was able to meet a multitude of other entrepreneurs with whom I network and swap tips and skills. I have landed wholesale deals with local shop owners that stopped at my market booth. I have met and built relationships with PR professionals who have helped me land features on the news and in publications. Exploring wholesale accounts and receiving customer referrals helped me get into corporate gifting as well. It can be tough to build a customer base as a new business without deep pockets or big connections, but this is where a little friendliness, self-advocacy, and resourcefulness have gone a long way.
Thus my strategy for sales has been to guide folks through a funnel to my own website while supplementing my reach through a variety of external channels.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.whitepinebathbrew.com
- Instagram: @whitepinebathbrew
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/whitepinebathbrew
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/white-pine-bath-brew/
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC7YTjO5pVuXcVlZsMUHkcAw
- Other: TikTok: @whitepinebathbrew
Image Credits
Ashley Teresse Photography