With a focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs from around Greater Philadelphia, "The Creators" is a weekly feature presented as a part of PHL Inno. Check back each Monday for a new story on a local business. Have a story you think we should know about? Email associate editor Lisa Dukart at ldukart@bizjournals.com.
For Chartel Findlater, the bathroom is a place of safety and serenity. An escape for her, she looks to share that feeling with others through her artisan soap company Gold + Water Co.
“I've always loved bath and soap products,” said Findlater. Previously in an abusive relationship, that space and its running water became a haven for her.
Seeking further respite, Findlater turned to YouTube, where she watched motivational videos. Frequently popping up in her recommendations was one on soap making. One day she decided to watch it.
Soon a passion for handcrafting soap and bath products was born. Over the ensuing six months, Findlater decided to launch her own business, which formally debuted in March 2019.
With little experience in the space – she had created products for her hair before, but “nothing this serious,” she said – Findlater got the business off the ground. She initially made products in her kitchen but in February moved to a working space in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. “It's not customer facing,” she said, noting a retail space isn’t currently in the works. Instead, she’s focused on having her products stocked at retailers, though her main objective is to grow e-commerce sales.
Her earliest products were body butters, a beard balm and lotion bars, which she described as “a ChapStick, but for your body.” Made with cocoa butter and coconut oil – ingredients she still favors – the lotion bars didn’t prove the right choice, so she scrapped them and instead moved forward with soaps.
Starting small, she focused on creating a luxurious experience, crafting bars that are both aesthetically pleasing and soothing. Scents range from freshly washed linen to eucalyptus mint. The roughly 4-ounce bars retail for $9 each. Findlater also expanded into a salt soak and foaming bath mix.
Demand continues to grow and Findlater has escalated soap production volume six-fold in 2021. Last year, Findlater estimates she was making about 100 bars of soap a month and today aims for about 600. “It was a huge leap,” she said.
While the products are popular, they don’t come without trial and error. To perfect her early recipes and to test new products, Findlater’s friends and larger network have been invaluable. “I'm always trying out new soap, I'm always giving out soap to friends,” she said.
A classically trained singer and graduate of Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, her involvement with the music industry was instrumental to her business success. Still active in the music scene – she works in a number of performing spaces ranging from solo artist acts to a jazz band to wedding bands – gigs are where Findlater first tested and sold products. Adding in farmer’s markets, those combined spaces allowed Findlater to reach wider audiences and ultimately expand her brand.
Since then, Gold + Water has grown largely thanks to word-of-mouth and social media. While Findlater worked to cultivate relationships with local retailers – products are available at a number of Philadelphia spots like Marsh + Mane, Vault + Vine, and V Marks the Shop – she’s made national and international connections, too. Retail partners from Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and even Great Britain reached out to stock her products, she said.
Harkening back to how the brand started, Findlater built into her business model a commitment to giving back, partnering with organizations focused on anti-abuse initiatives, mental health and hygiene. “It became a personal goal of mine to extend that opportunity to others,” she said. “Implementing self-care is what helped me to heal and get through the process of ending that situation.”
Despite the pandemic being a difficult time for most small businesses, it actually gave Findlater the time and space to scale her business. “It was really the pandemic I think that shifted me into high gear,” she said. “It definitely provided me more time to … just be in the workshop. I would be up all day and all night just making products.”
In August, Findlater left her job as a music teacher at a K-8 school in Philadelphia to pursue Gold + Water and her own music full-time.
Findlater said she’s found “nothing but support and camaraderie” in the Philadelphia business community. “I feel really grateful to have that.”
What is your goal for customers using your products?
When it comes to soap, I love the aesthetics of it, the designs that I'm able to make. I love people to feel like from the time they see the product until the time they use the product that they are reminded they are what is luxurious.
What differentiates your products from commercial ones?
I use what's called the cold process technique. I'm mixing solid oils and fats and butters to create the product, and it goes through saponification. [Big brands] take out some [ingredients] that are a little more expensive, one of them being glycerin.
Bar soap products are often cited as more sustainable than their liquid counterparts. What initiatives are you making to that end?
Initially, it was not at all a part of my vision and I think now I would like to include it more. For example, the packaging. I moved from using plastic for my body butters to glass. I moved from shrink wrapping things in plastic to putting them in boxes. I do still want to keep some packaging. I know there's a push towards naked soap … but it wasn't something that was received well by my customer base and it wasn't something I felt comfortable doing, having product exposed in the retail space, especially in terms of the pandemic. Rather than discarding the less beautiful pieces of soap that come off the ends … I sell them so that people can use them or travel with them.
What are your goals for the future?
I want to expand upon the men's line. I'm really trying to get a sense of what men need and what is appealing to them. The beard balm did well, I had a beard oil at one point, but I didn't love the formulation so I stopped making it. But that is something that I'd like to get back into, especially for the holiday season.
