We were lucky to catch up with Melissa Kreis recently and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
Great question! My parents were very hard-working people. They did it all right, raising us, in my opinion. Although, I probably did not think that as a kid! They taught my brothers and me to work for what we wanted. We all three turned out to be entrepreneurs in one way or another. They also taught us to be good to people which would always be part of who we are and one day serve to create an incredible customer base for Tomboy. We grew up in church as part of the Lutheran faith, learning the original teachings of the ancient church of the apostles and early Christians and hearing positive messages of love and motivation. But probably the coolest thing my parents did was teach us to think for ourselves, be open-minded, not bound by convention and know that some things in life are meant for us and some things are not. They also raised us in a small, rural town where we could run free and experience Nature and every adventurous pursuit we could think up! My Mother was a rebel Tomboy!
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?
BACKSTORY: I was a displaced Wildlife Biologist who had moved back home to my small town to take care of my ailing Mother. There are limited jobs here, so I took a position teaching high school Chemistry, Environmental Studies, Anatomy and Physics. I loved it! During my Outside the Box approach to teaching, we created an herbal remedy for Poison Ivy that was extremely effective. And a business was born.
During this time frame, I had three small children of my own. The oldest, now a Chemical Engineer, was seven years old when she tried to read a facial cleanser label and intuitively told me we should, “start our own skincare company” because the ingredients in that cleanser were sketchy!
R&D: In 2001, we launched into the Research & Development of herbs, roots and wild ingredients that would change the trajectory of our lives! Everybody was studying; the high school students, my little children and my friends. I am an avid whitewater paddler and we always get into poison ivy on the banks of the rivers we paddle. This was the beginning of our research data.
GOAL: We wanted to create affordable PHYTONUTRIENT cleansers, scrubs and salves that would really make a difference in the health of our skin WITHOUT the chemical load found in almost every product on the market.
OUR LINE: We started adding products that we needed or wanted to our Brand like facial cleansers & scrubs, masks, oils, moisturizers, lip slicks and body scrubs. We added more adventure skin salves along the way including a bug repellent, a climbing jam, muscle rub, sun relief and a remedy for scars and stretchmarks. All named after Rapids, Rock Climbing routes or Women of the southeast!
How are we DIFFERENT, let me count the ways!
1. Anhydrous-I quickly realized that I could not preserve water naturally. Even one drop of water in my formulations caused them to mold and ruin. My main stabilizer, non-gmo Vitamin E, was not powerful enough to preserve water as a solvent in the products.
Instead of finding an unnatural, dangerous chemical way to preserve water, we chose to leave the water out! Something 99% of brands on the market choose NOT to do as they are almost all just rearrangements of water. Don’t believe me? Check the labels of your favorite products. What is first??? Water!
Tomboy does not contain water because we recognized long ago the dangerous implications carcinogens and endocrine disruptors have on the body as well as the environment.
Even the USDA allows water and salt in organic skincare products. The truth is, there is no way to be organic and contain water at the same time, because of what you have to add to the product in order to preserve it. Organic but containing water is a complete misnomer. We say, you cannot ride two horses with one behind!
2. Herbs & Roots from the Forest: We source ingredients that mimic skin’s natural factors. Some we wild-harvest, some we grow, the rest we source from our long-time partners, who like us, have feet well rooted in the healing traditions of the botanical world.
3. We formulate based on pH and the ACID MANTLE, not skin type. Paying attention to the skin microbiome and acknowledging the fact that skin prefers a slightly acidic environment to stay healthy has led us to solve our Tomboy’s skin issues and create incredibly efficacious products. Our tagline is ‘Expect Results!”
4. Although we have yet to gain the official status, we operate as a B-Corp balancing purpose with profit for the good of our community and our people.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Most people never fully appreciate how LITTLE they actually need to live a full life! I have bootstrapped this business from its inception. Tomboy had to be organic in its growth because I had zero capital to invest in it. I was raising three children and living in rural Appalachia.
I remember speaking at a Driving Business & Entrepreneurship Conference at a local college and hearing someone say that not having enough capital was the main reason small businesses go under. That statement really hit as close to home as it gets! That was me and Tomboy, not enough capital!!!
But it did not really matter. I took everything in stride, one step at a time and worked hard to make sales and really connect with my customer base. Working on my taxes one year, I realized a trend, my revenues had been doubling each year.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The whole Tomboy story has been one of resilience! Most people never knew how hard it was for me to build this business. I lost my Mother before Tomboy ever started. She would never meet my children John Martin and Halle Koren (her namesake) only Somer, the oldest. In some respect, my Mother is Tomboy.
I worked four jobs during the time I was building the business. I had the full-time teaching position, worked in the Guidance Office after school, taught homebound students and made Tomboy during the night. There was not much sleep during those years.
There was a divorce. Something that stagnates even the most resilient families. But we moved on.
We experienced the loss of our home.
My incredible oldest brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died at 58. He was the one everyone relied on for everything from fixing the sink, to running the farm, to bringing us love and laughter like no one else. My dad would never recover from the loss. Nor the rest of us!!!
A financial scam in our house account cost me the loss of the money I had set aside to build our new house. It was devastating financially!
A good 4 years passed that I did not have a vehicle to drive. I took that as a challenge. I walked, ran or rode my bicycle. Hard to do in a town that was an hour away from everything.
And through it all my family was by my side, the good Lord who loves me even though I do not deserve it and Tomboy. Tomboy was meant for me, you see. It sustained me all through the years financially, academically, botanically, mentally, socially. Tomboy is my big adventure. It is what I was born to do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tomboyskincare.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomboyskincare/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tomboyskincare
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-kreis-stephens-91851960/
- Youtube: @tomboyorganicskincareco.1098
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/tomboy-organic-skincare-co-sunbright
Image Credits
Somer Stephens, photo credit