Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Whitney & Josh Wyss. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Whitney & Josh, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

We started our business in 2021 with the intent for me to have some regular adult interaction when we had kids and I would become a stay-at-home mom. In 2022 we had the pleasure of having our first child. She attended events with us from when she was a few months old, and it has been a lot of fun and work to keep up with in-person events with a baby. Attending markets while breastfeeding or when the baby starts crawling is tricky. It takes more time and effort to keep her entertained the older and more mobile she gets. We plan to continue bringing her and future kids to markets to give them opportunities to learn good socialization skills and eventually how to run a business. Outside of business skills, we hope to pass along the art of soap making to keep alive an uncommon, but important, skill. Josh’s family has even done the same for us by teaching us the skills of butchering and canning. All of these skills have reminded us of the importance of acknowledging the source of where the things we depend on for daily life come from. We often get so much feedback from other vendors and customers about how good she is how they never hear her fuss during events or how well she can sleep through all the commotion. We attribute this to starting her young and bringing her with us everywhere, especially to any markets we are selling at. I think it is so important to have a family business because the goal in owning this business is to support other moms, and to do that they need to see that I’m a mom just like them.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Simply Bliss creates skincare for busy moms by a busy mom. As a mom to a toddler with another on the way, I know how hard it can be to keep up with a skincare routine like you see influencers on IG or TikTok promote. Some of those routines are so involved and I have to wonder if it is really necessary. Who has 45 minutes every morning to get ready and do a full skincare routine when they are trying to keep a toddler out of the toilet or hurrying to finish so they can figure out why their toddler is crying? I sure don’t. So I develop products to help moms elevate their skin care without sacrificing any precious time. Shampoo and conditioner 2-in-1 bars eliminate a step from my routine by combining them. I developed my soap bars to be extra moisturizing so I don’t have to spend time lathering my skin in lotion after I shower and then waiting for that lotion to absorb. Adding a shower steamer to my shower to open up my stuffy nose adds no extra time and makes a short shower feel like a luxury. We work hard on your skincare routine so you don’t have to. We want to be a source of products and encouragement to real moms who are just trying to survive their day but want a realistic skin-care routine that really works and really works for them.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We have always sold on our own website, but the last 3 years sales have been more than 90% in-person sales. We intentionally started with in-person markets for a couple of reasons. We were new to every aspect of business and starting with online marketing felt overwhelming. We thought and later proved, that selling direct-to-consumer in-person helped us to refine our brand vision, packaging, and how we position each product. Our first year and a half we were using Square for Point of Sale and website. It is an amazing platform to start with because of the lower technical skill required plus its standard feature set cannot be beat considering the only required cost is their very reasonable credit/debit card transaction fee.
As we matured our products and brand and started intentionally focusing on improving our online presence we wanted to start selling bundled products and realized that Square (at that time) did not support such a thing in a way that would allow us to keep inventory accurate. Because of that, we migrated our website (and a few months later Point of Sale, aka phone app with card reader) over to Shopify.
Josh works in IT during the day and was already interested in website building, but there are plenty of videos and tutorials to help any skill level.
Of course, Shopify has a much higher cost than Square’s free platform, but it has allowed us to add product bundles, a loyalty program, and reviews and ratings to our website; even better, we could fully express our branding and added custom features like a product fragrance-strength scale and special descriptors to help online customers understand our scents without a smell-o-vision.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

We have gained most of our followers through consistently showing up to community-based in-person pop-up markets/sales/fairs/etc. Since there are 2 of us we always make sure at least 1 of us is standing, smiling, greeting, and making small talk with potential customers. Engaging with customers is important to show that we are attentive to them and can answer any of their questions about our products. During the slow periods of a market, we make sure we are networking with everyone especially other vendors, even if they are selling similar products to ours. We all have knowledge to gain and share from each other, and can often find out about other opportunities. Vendors selling similar things can also be a great resource for gaining new customers because we don’t necessarily overlap in every aspect of business, and if someone asks me for something I don’t sell I can point them in the direction of that other business, and hopefully they would do the same for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.simplybliss.store
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/simplyblisscares
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/simplyblisscares