An Aiken small business owner’s skincare products are now being sold in more than 240 World Market stores across the U.S.
Maggie Rasmussen’s Cleanse Gourmet products were already being sold at Magnolia Market, owned by the HGTV “Fixer Upper” stars Chip and Joanna Gaines, but this is her first major retailer deal, she said.
She got a call from a World Market buyer in January, about four years after starting her current product lineup of soap, body scrubs, creams, lip balms and other products. The buyer had seen the Clean Gourmet products in a small boutique in Brooklyn.
“She said she had been watching my brand for about a year and a half, waiting for their customers to be ready for the cleaner formula and price point,” Rasmussen said.
World Market did a test run of the Cleanse Gourmet products, selling 13 items in 20 of its stores. After eight weeks, the company decided to move forward with 11 of the products in its 242 stores. This works out to about 2,500 units of each product every two months or so, Rasmussen estimates.
The American chain also put in an additional holiday order for 15,000 units, which ships out on August 15, she said.
While working with a large company has been a little intimidating, Rasmussen said she’s been making her own products for more than 20 years.
“Making the products isn’t the hard part,” she said. “It’s the business side of things. I want to be sure it’s getting done correctly, and that I’m not missing any of the business paperwork. It’s a learning curve.”
The World Market buyer told Rasmussen that its customers are picking the products with cleaner ingredients, even if they’re at a higher price point.
“Consumers these days are more educated on the formulas,” Rasmussen said.
The exciting deal has required Rasmussen to suddenly upscale a business she previously ran mostly by herself. She’s hired eight temporary workers to help her get the holiday shipment ready and she’s moved out of her small Aiken studio into a warehouse.
Previously, Rasmussen got about 95% of her business from Faire, which allows spas and boutiques to order in bulk. She was also selling in a small group of stores by Terrain, a brand owned by Anthropologie.
She started selling skincare products out of her home while doing florals for weddings, using the money she made to reinvest in Cleanse Gourmet.
“Floral design gave me a lot of inspiration,” she said. “I like ingredients that I can see and smell.”
Her background in florals led to her using a lot of dried botanicals in her products, something that helps set her products apart, she said. Her other selling point is that every product is still handmade.
“Keeping it handmade is time-consuming but it sets us apart, helps keep the quality up, gives me more control over the formulas and provides jobs here, which is important for me,” she said.
