Because there were no organic skin-care products on the market that met the high-quality standards entrepreneur Peggy Raymer wanted, she had them made herself.

Now, barely a year after opening Madre Bello, Raymer has gained international attention for her polished brand and pure products.

 “I didn’t feel I was doing anything out of the ordinary,” she says of establishing the company.

“It was just putting in the time and research. Businesses are made by putting in the time and plugging away.”

In the beginning especially, research was the order of the day for Raymer.

 “I just researched a ton on the Internet and one thing leads to the next which leads to the next – the Internet is a great thing.”

She started by Googling the word manufacturer for country-wide options because she wanted her products to be 100-per-cent Canadian made.
 

“You want to make sure you have the right manufacturer for your products and that they’ll do what they say they’ll do,” she explains. She checked the backgrounds and reputations of the companies she shortlisted. “There’re a lot of things you have to look out for.”

She spoke to them by phone, sampled products, inquired about their factory procedures and examined full ingredient lists. She discovered legal loopholes allowing harmful additives to be included in skin-care products without having to be catalogued publicly.

 “Many products claiming to be safe have ingredients that are really not great when used on a regular basis,” says Raymer. “Organic packaging regulations are only now being put into place, which means many products labelled organic may use only one or two organic products in shopping list of ingredients.”

A few manufacturers she researched told her they were organic, but provided an ingredient list that included multiple chemicals.

In the end, she found a company that did use all organic ingredients and even went as far as to clean their factory equipment with vinegar rather than chemicals to avoid contaminating the product.

 “I spoke directly to the owner and we seemed to hit it off really well,” she recalls. “I told them what I wanted and they came up with the product – they have chemists on site.”

She was very happy with the results.

Not only did the products work well and include the things she wanted without the things she didn’t, the manufacturing process itself proved to be consistent, clean and reliable.

“At some point, you’ve just got to trust that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do and try them out,” she shrugs. “So I tried them out with a little bit of product and they did what they said, so I tried a little more.

“I was very comfortable with it.”

Her work, however, was only beginning.

Next up was researching the bottles she was to use, including the spray tops and lids. Again the internet pointed her to a local supplier who could give her exactly what she needed. The Toronto-based company would also take care of shipping the necessary packaging to the manufacturing plant in British Columbia.

“I found a bottle manufacturer that makes all shapes and sizes of bottles,” she says. “I looked at a bunch of different bottles and caps and found what was best suited for my product – the right style and size. I liked the way our logo looked on it.”

Because she was developing bath products, she wanted plastic bottles that wouldn’t break. She was careful to choose recyclable plastics with no harmful PBAs.

For the logo, she worked with the Barrie company Integra Graphics to produce the desired look to represent her new company and products.

It took years of research and development before Raymer was ready to formally launch the company in the summer of 2007. She ran ongoing tests until proven formulations could be repeated and proven time after time. Then she sampled the results.

“I wanted to make sure the products were not only healthy, but functional,” says the entrepreneur whose company is a member of the Organic Trade Association. “Developing my own line allows me to control the quality.”

Raymer originally got interested in developing organic products while running a successful cleaning company in Newmarket. Tired of exposing herself and her employees to toxic chemicals daily, she developed her own natural cleansers to do the job effectively and safely.

Many of her recipes can still be found on the Madre Bello website.

By the time she opened for business, she had prepared so well some people thought she was representing an existing company or had purchased a franchise.

“But it was built from scratch,” she confirms. “It’s a lot of hard work. I put in a lot of time and a lot of effort.”

That effort was rewarded this summer when she got a phone call from a public relations company representing the television Emmy Awards. She was asked if she’d like to include her products in the celebrity gift bags. After determining the offer was legitimate, she quickly agreed and shipped the product to Los Angeles in advance of the award show.

She also booked airline tickets and hotel reservations for herself and husband Morley.

“I was hoping to accomplish more brand awareness, which obviously did happen,” she reflects.

In addition to meeting directly with actors and celebrities (she spoke with performers from Dancing with the Stars, Jerry Maguire child actor Jonathan Lipnicki, and movie veteran Mike Madsen, for example), she also networked and gained the private e-mail addresses from the editors of Star Magazine, OK!, and the New York Times’ style section and has been in touch with them all.

 “There was an article in Fushion Magazine, out of L.A. that spoke about the gift bags in general and mentioned our lavender body wash,” says Raymer.

All together, this marketing opportunity cost the company about $5,000, but it was a valuable investment.

“It was absolutely worth it,” she comments on the two days spent in the Melrose Avenue spa greeting celebrities, their entourages and the media. “I would do it again. It was a lot of exposure, we made a lot of contacts and a lot of people now recognize me locally.”

Next up is getting her products more widely available. They are currently available on line and in speciality shops, spas and wellness centres, including Parry Sound’s Above and Beyond Your Expectations and Barrie’s The Healing Oasis. She has recently developed a smaller size suitable for in-room samples for bed and breakfast operations, inns and resorts.

“We’d like to develop that further for sure,” she projects. “We are looking to hire some outside sales people and will grow from there.”

There could be a retail boutique at some point, but she hasn’t fleshed those thoughts out yet.

She’s currently in talks with a major retailer who could get her attention instead. There’s a lot of research to be done yet.

 “E-commerce was a big learning curve,” she says of the Internet store she developed with the help of the team at Iboza.com. “I’m just taking it one day a time.”

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