We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Megan Schisler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Megan , thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our small family business was born from the need to find a way to help improve the skin health of our two youngest children. They both navigate life with many food allergies, asthma, and severe eczema. We had spent years trying all the hypoallergenic over the counter moisturizers with little to no improvement. They often just sting, leaving the skin more irritated. With a combined 20-year background in healthcare and cosmetology, this Mama got to work!
What is tallow? Tallow is put simply rendered animal fat, most commonly from beef. It contains all the same vitamins, minerals and healthy fats that our skin has, making it the most biologically compatible with us. It truly is a super skin food!
I source my suet from a local butcher and process it to produce my own tallow for all the skincare products I make, for the highest quality possible. We found that the beef tallow skincare products I was making were gentle, soothing, and a game changer when added to their skincare routine. They do not fix the eczema, but where the MOST helpful and moisturizing for them. We started selling our skincare 3 years ago to help others with super sensitive skin, and to help bring back the use of tallow! We began selling at 1 market per week, and now you can find us at 20 stores throughout the states.
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 back background and context?
In 2019 I finally made it! Or at least that’s what I thought at the time. With a busy family life, it took me longer than most to finish schooling to be a medical assistant. I dreamed of nothing more than to start as a medical assistant and work my way up to nurse practitioner someday. After clinicals, I began working weekend shifts around my busy family schedule at two facilities, one an urgent care and another an express care. I was loving it! Then shortly after covid began, I suited up and worked 14-16 hour shifts at the urgent care because, in the beginning that’s where all the patients were sent. I worked hard, changed out of scrubs in my driveway to not bring it home to my family, and went back to do it over and over again. I eventually caught covid pneumonia and was out for 5 weeks with 2 of those being in the hospital. I as very scared, it took a while for me to gather the courage to go back to where I caught a virus that made me so very ill. I sat with oxygen on at home at 35 years old for 2 weeks, recovery was a long process giving me plenty of time for mulling this over. During this time, the state enacted a mandate requiring the new covid vaccine for healthcare staff, and a looming date of 10/29/2021. I recovered and felt great about my decision to come back. I was only back for a tumultuous 3 months before the date came, and I was forced to resign because I chose not to get the vaccine, it just wasn’t right for me. After giving patients the right to choose, I was left without a choice at all, except to leave the job I thought defined me at the time. After grieving for a while, I reached a point when I decided that my handmade tallow skincare, I use to sooth my children’s eczema would become a business. At home I have four children, two of which have extensive food allergies, asthma, and severe eczema. We had tried all other avenues to improve their eczema, with little to no improvement. It was heart breaking to see them scream in pain from the stinging of store bough moisturizing creams. The beef tallow skincare does not at all fix the eczema but adding it to our skincare routine has been a complete game changer! And so, I decided this is how I would help people! It has become a thriving business over the past few years, and I now sell my handmade products in 21 stores throughout the United States.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
It is a true family business, we have grown so much since I first started that now my four children and husband all help in different ways from labeling, marketing emails, bottling, markets, sorting, shipping logistics, and bringing boxes into CVS for shipping. The best part is seeing the kids take in the basics about running your own business, both the good, and the hard! But the most cherished part for me personally, is when a customer comes back to tell me how their skin or their child’s skin has improved! That’s just close to my heart, because I have been THAT parent before searching and try anything to help make your baby’s skin a “little happier”.
Our focus is to slowly keep scaling our tallow skincare to the point that it fully financially supports us, I have branched out to include a few new items including a tallow Dish Soap Bar, and a Paw Balm for pets! My best seller is whipped tallow body butter, which only contains 2 ingredients and I love to show people that sometimes that’s really all you need!
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
I keep in touch with my clients and audience through social media, in person markets and e-mail marketing. I think the most important part of keeping brand loyalty is giving the same customer service you would want to receive. For example, in the skincare industry even as a natural brand I do have some products that use high quality fragrance oils, because I need to appeal to a very wide range of customers in order to be a sustainable business. When customers are choosing my skincare and ask questions about that I am 100% transparent. Another example would be when there is an issue with a shipment getting lost, I take care of the issue right away. When I personally contact a company with questions about allergens, cross contamination, and such it’s rare to get a reply at! So, when I can have a talk to straighten out all my questions with the business own, in my opinion it’s the highest level of customer service and I will return over and over!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://heritagehomesteadco.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeritageHomestead2020/
