Marie's Story about how her Poison Ivy/Oak Soap business got started
I’m 55 years old and I was born in Grants Pass Oregon (the poison oak capitol of the world). Much of my childhood was spent covered in pink drying and cracking liquid. At about age 20 I developed a model for a successful life and this was it:
If I stuck to the Life Rules I only got poison oak two or three times a year and these cases only lasted for 3 to 4 weeks.
My worst case of poison oak occurred when I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter. My husband wanted me to help him load leaves into the shredder in the yard. Of course I did not want to because it violated my Life Rules and I would most certainly contract poison oak. He, of course, was positive that there was ZERO poison oak in the leaves and claimed that I was using my condition to avoid helping. I relented.
The next morning I awoke to discover I could not open either of my eyes. My face was so puffed up that I couldn’t even open one eye with my fingers. The other I could just pry open a small slit. Of course, I also had poison oak all over the rest of my body but since my eyes were shut, I couldn’t see exactly where in order to put anything on it. I had a friend take me to the store and bought every poison oak remedy on the shelf, none of which helped. I kept getting worse over the next few days, until finally my husband took me to the doctor who simply pointed out that I was pregnant and there was nothing that could be done. He assured me that in time I would recover. I did recover. I did not forget.
One day I mentioned to a friend that I wasn’t looking to do anything very big or complex in my life; I just wanted to achieve something simple that would help people. Not long after, the recipe for the soap popped into my head. That was over 10 years ago and it has never changed.
When I told my friends and family that I was going to make soap for poison oak their response was 100 percent against the idea. Every person said it was a bad idea and that if it could be done it would have been done already and I just was not the right person to take on the task. All my friends assured me that the big drug companies were on the job already and if something could have been done, they would have done it.
With so much encouragement, I went ahead and made a small batch of soap from the recipe. I printed a label on the computer, on plain white paper and sealed it with cello tape. I placed the 12 bars of soap on the shelf in my herb shop and waited.
They all sold!!!
A few days later, a woman came into the store to tell me how much she liked the soap. One by one, so did most of the others who had bought the first 12 bars.
Bravely, I made a double batch. By the end of one year I had sold over 200 bars. By year three I was producing 5,000 a year. To date, I have sold over 300,000 bars.
Every day, I am grateful for the opportunity to help people who suffer from poison ivy or oak.
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