Here you can learn about who we are and why we started 37 years ago.
We are a small, family-owned soap-making business founded on the vision that everything we use should be part of Mother Earth, working with her in harmony rather than placing a burden on her. We believed that the products we used to cleanse our bodies should be made from herbs, plant oils and fats — gifts from Mother Earth.
When we started 37 years ago, these products were not available to buy, so we decided to try making what we needed ourselves. Initially, we only intended to make products for our own family: Mum, Dad, ten children, three dogs and a few cats.
We began with a soap, a shampoo and a balm. This grew into a business, and we started producing on an increasingly larger scale as environmental awareness gained momentum in the 1990s. We have continued along that path ever since, becoming the company we are today, with the same philosophy and a range of products all based on Nordic herbs, plant oils and fats.
Today, our business is run by Bjarka, a soap maker with 37 years of experience, a herbalist and a Southern Sámi with ancestral roots among the Forest Sámi of Västerbotten; Christer, our all-rounder, who takes care of practical matters and helps wherever he is needed — you will often meet him at a market; Salomon, a soap maker with four years of experience, who now makes all our soaps and shampoos; and Patrick Bergfeldt, who manages social media and marketing.
We make all our products by hand. The only machine we use is a hand blender. Making handmade soaps and natural skincare products that meet the needs of modern life is a craft that requires knowledge and years of experience.
From gathering the herbs to having a finished soap, the process takes a year. We steep dried herbs in oils for at least four months before using the infused oils in production. Once the soap has been made, it has a pH of 11. It then needs to dry for a long time, often between five and six months, at the right humidity and temperature, to reach a neutral pH of 7.
Only then can we package and sell the soap or shampoo. This means that the weight of the soap or shampoo you buy is its weight after drying. Around 10% of its weight is lost during the drying period. It is a production process that reflects true craftsmanship, built on knowledge and experience.
Becoming a skilled and knowledgeable soap maker takes years of practice, countless mistakes and experience. Every product we make and sell has been developed by us from scratch.
When we develop a recipe, we begin by deciding what we want the product to do. This is followed by months of study and research into which herbs, oils and fats will provide the properties we want the finished product to have.
Once that stage is complete, a test group tries the products for a few months to make sure they work as intended. If the group approves a product, we register it in the CNCP register and receive an invoice from the Swedish Medical Products Agency. It is then ready to be sold to you, the consumer.
Developing a new product takes between one and two years.