We recently connected with Nicole Webb and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?

In January of 2020, I made a New Year’s resolution to really get my business out there and start participating in more markets and events. Then we all know what happened just a few months later. I was devastated about the lockdown and it felt like an impossible hurdle to keep up the momentum of my business. Even with online sales, I worried if it was safe to ship products because we didn’t know anything about this virus yet. Needless to say, markets were not going to be an option for a while so I had to shift to a fully online presence. I focused all of my energy on my website and social media. I feel that getting started selling online is much more strategic and time-consuming than working at events. You’re trying to be heard over so many more people and brands. It takes a lot to just get a second of their attention. But after all this time, I feel like the people that have found me and my products are just the best. I love when people tell me that my soap is all that they use now. As a small maker, that means everything to me.

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 name is Nicole Ashley (she/they) and I am the sole person behind Efesie & Co. making artisan, cold process soap and other self-care products. I grew up in Homewood, IL and briefly studied photography and the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Now I’m back living in Chicago and running my business out of my studio in Pilsen.

I started Efesie & Co a bit by accident. About 5 years ago, I purchased a candle-making kit to make gifts for my family for Christmas. I enjoyed the process so much that I started getting into a ton of research. Eventually, I stumbled across soap making and it just clicked. The combination of science and creativity was totally perfect for me so I wanted to learn as much as I could. I’ve always felt like an entrepreneur at heart, so it was only natural that I wanted to start sharing my creations with the world.

I find my inspiration primarily from nature. I lean towards fragrances that are earthy, herbal, or floral and love finding color inspiration from flowers, insects, and birds. Being queer, I’ve never wanted to gender my products. There’s so much out there that is “for men” or “for women.” But people are so unique and their preferences are as well, and I like to acknowledge that.

As someone who has struggled with mental health for most of my life, I know how important self-care is. It’s easy to forget to take care of yourself, especially with how busy we all are these days. We often save using the “good” things for special occasions. But there’s no reason that we can’t treat ourselves regularly and take that extra moment just for you. We all deserve to feel joy on the most ordinary days. Even when it’s hard to find, sometimes you just need to make it yourself. If using the pretty soap is your little moment of joy, then I want to be able to help you with that! If it’s something else, I want you to feel empowered to do that, too!

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

My business really is like my baby. I never started off with any lump sum, but did the best with what I had. In the beginning, I was very lucky to have a partner that wanted to help contribute to some of those initial expenses. But as far as finances, I’ve just been figuring it out as I go. These days, I set aside money from each paycheck from my full time job to invest in equipment and supplies. I’ve been working on scaling my production, so being able to buy larger quantities of items has helped me lower some of those costs and give me back a little more of my time.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Before I started my business, I didn’t know a single thing about soap making. Although I picked it up pretty quickly, there is always so much more to learn – recipe formulation to design techniques. The hardest thing to accept, especially after doing it for a while, is that sometimes the soap gods are just not on your side. Temperature, humidity, and timing can all affect your batch, and even if you think everything seems perfect, things can still go wrong. It can be heartbreaking to screw up a batch, especially with the increase in ingredient prices. But being able to pivot and rescue a batch is super important. Shredding it into a new batch, creating samples, and creative naming are a few things that I do to redeem mistakes and avoid that loss. You just have to be gentle with yourself and remember that it’s an art and your biggest critic is always going to be yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: efesie.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/efesieandco
• Facebook: facebook.com/efesieandco

Image Credits
(For first 3 action shots) Jolene Sage Photo