We were lucky to catch up with Johanna Seibel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Johanna, thanks for joining us today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

When I started, I was SO EXCITED. I would say I am creative in a different way than an artist, I just have tons of ideas all the time. I had so many ideas for body care products to develop and cute signs to design and what to write on my website and what pictures to take and what posts to publish and… You get the gist. Most of those weren’t particularly harmful, but I definitely had a tendency to purchase a lot of different ingredients to play around with rather than working on one product at a time and then seeing what I would need after that. I ended up having to throw away rancid oils or find emergency ways to use them up at home before they would go bad. Either way, there was no return on that investment. All the different essential oils and scents also intrigued me to the point of unnecessary purchases. I also tended to buy in bulk because it was a better deal when I didn’t even know for sure yet that I would love that ingredient. Same with subscriptions. I bought my website builder subscription for three years only to figure out one year into it that another provider would have been more convenient for me to synchronize with my sales system. I should have started smaller!
These are ways I could and should have been financially wiser and more focused on the business aspect of my business rather than the creative, fun aspect.

Johanna, 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?

My name is Johanna and I moved to the U.S. from my home country Germany three years ago. What brought my here? Love. Thankfully, it was worth it because my husband Zack and I are happily married now. In Germany I went to college for business and economy and knew I wanted to own a business some day. I thought it was going to be food related (and that’s still in my dreams!), but somehow I ended up with “Jojo’s Body Care”… And it came to be like this: in my college town Leipzig a sustainable lifestyle was the mainstream rather than just a small pocket of people. There, I discovered low waste products like deodorant cream. Once I moved to the U.S., there wasn’t the same wide availability for sustainable body care products I was used to. I live in a small town called Bowling Green, Kentucky, and I wanted to provide a whole line of body care essentials locally that wasn’t as wasteful as conventional products in plastic containers and that wasn’t filled with cheap fillers or toxic ingredients either. And I wanted them to be offered at the price they actually cost and not an inflated brand name price.

In the product development phase, I felt like there must be more I can do other than just having reusable containers. That’s when I decided to use byproducts of other industries that still have amazing skincare benefits. Think of grapeseed oil, for example. It’s a byproduct of the wine industry, but still moisturizing and therefore increasing the softness and elasticity of the skin. Another example I love is mango seed butter, cold-pressed from the content of the mango seed. It has an incredible skin feel and is so moisturizing as well!
That’s the biggest difference between my business and other producers. It’s not just the packaging where waste is reduced, but even with the formulations itself I try to be as low waste as possible while maintaining the efficiency of the product. I want my products to be amazing and sustainable and I don’t give up developing a product until I get there – even if it takes me a year! My lip balm and facial toner both took 8 months to formulate until they were just right and exactly what I had in mind. I think my customers can tell how much I care when they use my products.
One of my favorite things in my business is when people buy something skeptically and then come back the next week with wide open, surprised eyes, saying “this is wonderful, it actually works!!” That’s always a small, silent victory for me over conventional beauty products.

The first product I ever made was a deodorant cream, then I continued with a whipped body butter, recently added a facial line – and I am still not done!
My most popular product are solid perfumes in small 0.5oz tins. They last about 5 months of daily use (you just swipe your finger over them and apply to your pulse points!) and they don’t melt in your pant pockets or in the car in the summer. Pretty convenient!

Today, I am almost two years into my business, I am a permanent vendor at a local farmers market, I occasionally travel for craft shows, and I have my products in four local stores. My most recent success is a deal with a spa that is not only selling my products, but also using them on their clients. How exciting!

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

Actually, I was in the middle of opening a food truck when Jojo’s Body Care came along. I had already bought a truck to pull a trailer, a fridge, some smaller supplies, and was ready to move forward with it. Around the same time, I started making my deodorant creams, but hadn’t seriously intended for it to go anywhere back then. I tried making sales on Etsy, nothing happened. Then, one day, I walked around downtown and figured to just pop into a cute gift store that sells a lot of local products and ask if they want to sell my deodorant cream. They said I should bring a sample by. I did. They loved it and said they would sell it. I was taken by surprise how nonchalantly and quickly that came along! Next thing I know I was working on a logo, packaging, getting a business license, … And I started developing other products as well. The food truck was quickly forgotten about unit I realized that I should maybe get rid of the things I had purchased for it. I traded the truck for my husband’s and my dream car (a Mazda Miata from 1993!). The fridge was actually broken (which I didn’t know when I bought it) and the other items never sold. That was about a $2000 loss, which stings, BUT I am so glad that everything developed the way it did. I made so many mistakes as a first time business owner and I think a food truck where you have to show up places with hot food ready to go would have been much less forgiving. One of the biggest challenges for me still are logistics of ordering ingredients etc., and that would have been even more of a challenge with perishables!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I am unsure where this thinking came from, but when I started selling my products, I had a very timid attitude of “oh, thank you so much for shopping me, I’m sorry to take your money”. Eventually, as I saw that customers loved what I made, it clicked for me and I realized that I have something great to offer and it’s 1) ok to be paid for that and 2) a favor that goes both ways. Yes, customers are paying my bills, but more importantly, I get to provide something that makes their life better. I get to make something they use on their skin every single day!! That makes me so proud!!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jojosbodycare.com
• Instagram: @jojosbodycare
• Facebook: Jojo’s Body Care

Image Credits
Kevin and Renee Photography (only for the product photos with the light background)