This last year has been quite a ride! Our little company has grown tremendously over the last four years and we remained grounded by focusing on what we do best-create effective skincare formulas with plants to bring your skin into a state of healthy radiance, and keep it there.
Team BendRacing / Skin Doctor
If you follow us on social media, I’m sure you’ve seen us post some updates on an adventure racing team that we sponsored this year. The team leaders, Jason and Chelsey Magness, have been longtime friends of mine, and they are also totally obsessed with our Skin Doctor salve. They absolutely rely on this salve to keep their feet and hands blister free during their long and strenuous races across countries, all over the world, and in some of the worst ions, I’ve ever seen someone experience outside. They have the entire team hooked on it and are now selling it when they travel internationally because so many other adventure racing teams want this salve. The Bend Racing / Skin Doctor team tells us that the Skin Doctor salve has been an important factor in winning most of the races that they have entered this last year. What a crazy way to test one of our products! We will continue sponsoring them in 2024 and are looking forward to watching them win a bunch of more races!
Doing Fewer Things Better
In order to remain true to our vision, we started off 2023 with a mantra that we repeated all year, "Do fewer things better". You've probably heard of the 80/20 rule in business- focus your energy on doing the 20% of things that create 80% of the results. I'm a very creative person, always excited to form something new and the skincare business is a great outlet for that energy.
We've explored and experienced just about every aspect over the last 25+ years, from selling at farmer's markets, online, wholesale, national distribution and running our own retail store for 15 years, to doing white label product lines.
Our explosive growth over the last few years has made it clear that our business needs me to focus more on our manufacturing and improving some of our existing formulas and coming out with some amazing new formulas that I think you’re gonna be really excited about. Even though we had some amazing managers and fantastic employees, running a spa and a retail store in addition to our wholesale program, and our manufacturing all had my attention spread very thin. My family and my personal life also needed more balance so we decided to make some sweeping changes.
Goodbye Beautiful Spa
In January, we closed our beautiful spa that was upstairs from our retail store. That was a really difficult decision because we spent a lot of time and energy making that space absolutely gorgeous and so peaceful and such a joy to work in. We had amazing aestheticians massage therapist up there and really loved, creating that community space where our local clientele could come and give back to themselves with some self-care and spa treatments. Fortunately, it’s still a beautiful, welcoming wellness space And I found some amazing folks to lease it out to so you can still get a facial, a massage and even even IV therapy.
Retail Store Closed
In July, we decided to close our retail store for good. Our lab has always been in the back of that space and we outgrew it a few years ago. We’ve been looking for a new space and found a warehouse. That’s perfect to continue making all of our products, and we moved in over the last few weeks!
Plastic Free in 2023
One of our other goals this year was to find more ways to get rid of plastic in our packaging.”Plastic Free in 2023” Was a goal that we set a couple years ago and we have almost gotten there. Some of our products like our facial minis didn’t do so well with all of the metal lids. We tried for the containers So we’re still using plastic lids on some of the jars but we’ve cut our plastic down considerably. I wasn’t sure how everyone was going to feel about us selling pumps and misters separately even though they’re a nominal $2. A lot of people have asked me why we charge for them at all and we do charge for them because I feel like it creates just enough friction that we might hesitate and reuse a pump we already have at home instead of buying a new one. Our reasonable pump program seems to have been really well received from all the feedback we’ve received, and we really appreciate you all making that effort to keep more plastic out of the landfill! We’re gonna continue this program indefinitely!
Welcoming Our New Content Writer
Another exciting event in the lives of us skincare was when our beloved Tama was promoted from shipping manager to content writer last spring. She’s a former aesthetician, has done a lot of writing for other skincare companies, and we are absolutely thrilled to have her on the team, sharing her expertise with us and with all of you.
New Product Launches
Some years, everything comes together in our product formulating world and 2023 was one of those years. We launched the new travel, facial minis, the deeply grounding Forest Bathing Hand & Body Lotion, a luxurious Blue Sapphire Illuminating Body Oil, a decadent Cardamom Vanilla Body Butter and the Beauty Sleep Overnight Brightening Mask. What a year!
International Shipping
We now ship to Canada! Yea!
What an incredible year. I can’t tell you how grateful we all are that you continue to support our small family business and treat yourselves to skin care that’s made ethically authentically and supporting so many other small businesses and local organic farms in the process. I believe that 2024 is going to be another great year.
Coming Soon
You may have seen some social posts mentioning the reformulation of our beloved Blue Sapphire Facial Oil- Some of you may have even received a mini travel size as part of a gift with purchase in December. We’ve been working on this new formula for a very long time and are so excited to be launching that in mid January. We have some other exciting surprises for you throughout the year, so stay tuned!
Happy new year to you all I wish you and your families and loved ones peace, joy, and abundance in this coming year.
Lots of love,
Angelina
