We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelly Hester a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

I sent out an email campaign to friends and family asking them to buy our products to help support our business. The response was very encouraging each time I did it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My journey as a soap maker began by teaching the honor to youth that belong to a large scouting club organization. After giving the creative experience to over 300 adolescents and teens, I decided to turn it into a business. What sets us apart from other soap makers is our commitment to using all natural, organic plant based products. We cater to customers who don’t want to use animal products on their skin, who have allergies and sensitivity to coconut oil and who are in need of soaps to help heal eczema, acne and chronic dry skin. I am most proud of being able to consistently provide a high quality product and to have customers return and give us feedback of how well our products have worked for them.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We do manufacture our products and have never used a vendor to manufacture anything for us. We started with a very good “soap making and build your business” library of books. We learned from very basic proven soap recipes and tried several different blends when developing our product line. Now, after four years we focus on six recipes that have been very successful for us. They include body bars, face bars, a soap for acne and a shampoo bar. We have learned to stick to the soap recipes and fragrance blends that our customers love and buy repeatedly.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We sell on our own website and do not use any outside platform. We chose to have control of our inventory and personal relationships with our customers. The pros are we can receive email directly from customers and other interested parties. We are able to manage our inventory closely, at a rate we are comfortable with for a small business like ours. The obvious downside is that we grow slower this way and don’t have access to the “millions” of customers that platforms would expose us to. On the other hand we don’t have to pay the costs or share our profits from paying fees.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pearlinesapothecary.com
• Instagram: @pearlinesapothecary
• Facebook: Pearline’s Apothecary
• Yelp: Pearline’s Apothecary

Image Credits
Kelly Hester