About |
Nature’s Lather started as a seed out of crisis in 1993 (see “My Story of Chemical Chaos”), and has roots from my upbringing on a 300 acre spread of nature’s paradise in upstate New York; where health is bountiful in the grasses and flowers, crops, trees, waters, soil and air; where each breath fills you with a sense of balance and priming for that which is next.
The “next” happened in December 2000, when my wife, Shannon, introduced me to one of her young hobbies, soap-making. I was enthralled with the idea of producing my own natural and healthy soaps, with the fragrance of my choosing. For the next holiday season I did some cyber-digging and found a high quality, natural glycerine soap base, a base that we are using to this day.
My hobby grew to where I would order 100 pounds of soap base twice a year, making about 400 bars of soap in the spring and another 400 in the fall; all for gifts to friends, patients and family. In 2006 I started making deodorants and body mists, and (after 25 years of studying nutrition and food labels) I started to finely study body product labels and ingredients, wondering what could be made instead of purchased.
It’s fair to say the circumstances and the love for creating overtook me in the fall of 2008 when I threw myself into an intensive 6 month study of a hypothetical bath and body business; purchasing, storage, product design and production details, retail design, website design, shipping, pricing, marketing, fundraising component… In April of 2009 it was decision time, and after a Dave Nash-guided quest for the right name, Nature’s Lather was born (and would come to form via the graphic design brilliance of Jean Gavigan).
Months of planning, preparation, and creation; along with the re-location of David Schmal from Arizona to Rhode Island to head up production, brought us to the opening of our retail store (in Warwick, RI) on October 14, 2009, and the opening of our website store (www.natureslather.com) on November 7, 2009. Here we are proud to offer you healthy, brilliant bath and body goods, handcrafted with the finest fragrances available, essential oils.
With hard work, smiles, and laughs; from there to here, and on to the next!