Glen Ridge residents Yolanda Grbic, left, and Meredith Moseley-Bennett have had initial success with their new skin-care business, purchasing ingredients from Africa and manufacturing the products on Moseley-Bennett’s dining room table and kitchen stove.
GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Encouraged by the reception friends have given their homemade body butters, two borough residents have cleared off the dining room table, revved up the food blender, and started a skin-care business with an eye toward raising the standard of living for women in Ghana.
Yolanda Grbic and Meredith Moseley-Bennett, the two Glen Ridge Donna Quixotes, have been producing homemade body butter, lip and bath balms, and sugar scrubs for awhile now, giving what they made in small batches as holiday gifts. They spoke at a local Starbucks recently about raising the ante.
“When we got great reviews,” Moseley-Bennett said, “we thought this could be a business. But if we were going to start one, we didn’t want to do something just to benefit us.”
“We wanted to be an example to our children,” Grbic added.
An important ingredient in natural skin-care products, the women said, is shea butter. This is an emollient extracted from the nut of the African karite tree. It is the base for their products which also include a natural bug repellant.
The name of their company is “Oh My Balm!” They started it this past February.
Making their products in small quantities, they started selling online. But the demand made them realize they had to start buying in bulk and they soon found Global Mommas, an organization that markets African products. Revenue from sales by Global Mommas is used to raise the standard of living for the Ghanaian women producing the shea butter. Grbic and Moseley-Bennett said they buy 25 to 50 pounds of shea butter at a time. Global Mommas is fair trade certified, they said. This means it promotes fair wages and labor practices as well as maintaining sustainability. It is monitored by the Fair Trade Federation.
“We looked for fair trade,” Moseley-Bennett said. “Not all fair-trade organizations are certified. You have to go through a whole process to become certified.”
She said they made 25 containers of a tick spray the week before and all have sold. The spray is marketed as Tickety Split.
Both women said their main objective in producing natural products is that they do not like the idea of putting chemicals on their own kids.
One big problem they had was finding a name for their company. Moseley-Bennett said all the cool, funny names for body products were already taken.
“The market is pretty much saturated for cool,” she said.
They came up with Oh My Balm! and purchased its domain rights for 99 cents.
The shea butter from Global Mommas does not come directly to Glen Ridge from Ghana. It passes first through a warehouse in Minnesota. At room temperature, it is solid.
“It looks like a giant moonrock,” Grbic said. “We take a knife and carve out a chunk.”
The production site is Moseley-Bennett’s dining room table. The shea butter is melted on her kitchen stove.
“My husband is very understanding,” she said.
The butter, once cooled, would harden again. But through research, plus trial and error, the women have discovered that refrigeration plays a critical part in butter and balm consistency.
“Once we get started working, we’re in it for at least three hours,” Moseley-Bennett said.
They currently have four different flavors of body butter and three lip balms. The mosquito repellant is called Mosquito Minder.
“It comes in a deodorant tube,” Moseley-Bennett said.
Tickety Split was selling like hot cakes and her sister-in-law, she said, came up with the name.
Now everything is purchased in bulk. Grbic and Moseley-Bennett search the Internet for sales.
They sold their wares at a craft sale in Montclair, in May. Oh My Balm! was to have had a table at the Glen Ridge Eco-Fair a few weeks ago but that event was cancelled because of rain. But the women have managed to hook up with their first commercial retailer, Olive That and More, a Montclair store. A friend of Grbic helped with that connection.
In between craft fairs, the merchandise is kept at Moseley-Bennett’s home.
“My husband and I cleared a path in the basement for storage,” she said.
The next big craft fair for them is the Clearwater Festival, in Croton-on-the-Hudson, June 17 and 18. The fair includes music. Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez will be performing.
Body butters and lip balms are only career sidelines for the women. Grbic is a middle school teacher in Jersey City and Moseley-Bennett is a certification manager for theater stagehands. One product they make is a body butter called Crew. A portion of its proceeds goes to a charity that assists stagehands if they are injured or in need. The name of the charity is Behind the Scenes.
The women work on their skin-care products after dinner and their children are put to bed. Right after dinner, the kids help with the labeling.
“The weekend is big stuff,” Grbic said. “After food shopping, we’ll go home and make 100 bottles of Tickety Split.
“Our goal right now is to have enough product for Clearwater,” Moseley-Bennett said. “Our Facebook market has been our biggest.”
She said that last week they passed a milestone.
“We were very excited,” Moseley-Bennett said. “We got an order from a total stranger. And then we got another order from a total stranger. Up to now, it’s been only our friends and family.”
For the upcoming Clearwater Festival, they had to obtain certification from New York state.
That was free. They also had to purchase craft-fair insurance.
“We had no idea it existed,” Grbic said.
“But you can buy it for a weekend,” Moseley-Bennett said. “It cost us $39.”
Their initial investment, including tables for craft fairs, has been $3,500. They have made $3,000. Global Mommas has received $250 but Moseley-Bennett said it is still early.
“We have $10,000 of product to go out the door,” she said.
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