THE COURAGE TO LAUNCH A SOAP BRAND
By Andrea Faulkner Williams
The Search for Good, Clean, Fun
For years, we struggled with dryness and eczema and smooth skin always seemed impossibly out of reach. It was frustrating spending money on yet another product that wasn’t helpful, clean, or safe for my little ones. So, while I was pregnant with our second baby, we tested and tried formula after formula until we found something that smelled good and worked. We named our company Tubby Todd—named after my husband, Brian Todd, who was an 11 pound baby (I know…OUCH!), and launched Lavender and Rosemary Hair and Body Wash. It was an immediate hit. Just as we hoped, it worked as well for others’ as it had for us!
We’ve since grown as a Tubby Todd Family in lots of ways. We opened up The Tub Hub (our office and showroom), added many team members, a third child, and 25+ natural bath products that have worked miracles for our family as well as thousands of others. They became the solution I (and so many others) had been looking for all those years.
The Ongoing Struggle: Balancing It All (Or Not At All)
Four years later and our life is FULL of kids and bubbles and trying to manage it all. At 8:00 in the morning, I pick up carpool and take them to elementary school on the way to The Tub Hub. While at work, I post on Instagram, spin around in my chair, shop online, and talk to my gal pals. Sound fun!? IT IS! Ok, there’s also a lot of budget, formulation, and packaging meetings. I always take lunch at 10:45, 11:00 is PUSHING IT because…this mama gets hungry. I go home at 3:30 to do homework, after-school sports, babies, and dinner. We go to the park, do bath time (duh!) and lots of stories before bed. And then I usually get back on and work for another few hours after the kids go to bed. Sometimes Brian and I just watch Jimmy Fallon and talk about how we could get him to use Tubby Todd on his kids.
Launching is the Hardest Part
Throughout this whole experience I think the thing I am most proud of is overcoming the fear to chase our dreams. Both as a company and a family, and especially all at the same time. It is really scary to tell people you are going to sell a product, especially something as silly as…soap! The week before we launched, I finally shared our business plan with a good friend and they asked me if I had heard of Johnson and Johnson…Yikes! We really believe in our products so selling them isn’t scary but sometimes it is scary to take those first steps to publicly announce “I sell soap!” or “I’m having (another) baby!” or whatever it is you dream of doing. The success of our company has come because of two things: 1. Our products work! They really do! They are great for sensitive skin and (almost) everyone who uses them loves them. 2. We have found the most incredible community of women who love to share good products. The online community who shares our products is how people find us! Thank you mamas!!
The Future: Connecting Families Through Good, Clean, Fun
This year, we’re launching dozens of natural products that help families connect. I am looking forward to lots of spinning in my chair at The Tub Hub as well as creating a community where employees can find a place that helps meet the needs of their family as well as their career. Tubby Todd was born because it met the needs of our family and now we are extending that dream to others. Our focus is to create not only products that make families feel safe and connected but a working environment that extends that same goal to our employees. And if that isn’t good, clean fun, I don’t know what is.
__________________________________________________________________________
I’m Andrea Faulkner Williams. I created Tubby Todd as a natural solution for my family’s sensitive skin. For years we struggled with dryness and eczema, and smooth skin always seemed impossibly out of reach. It was frustrating spending money on yet another product that wasn’t helpful, clean, or safe for my little ones.
Out of those discouragements came a drive and passion to create my own clean, plant-based bath products, and I spent years developing and testing them in my own home. We’ve since grown Tubby Todd into an entire line of 100% natural products that have worked miracles for our family and became the solution I had been looking for all those years.
Tubby Todd is all about good, clean fun for the whole family. Each and every bath product is made with natural ingredients that are simple and safe. We created Tubby Todd with sensitive-skinned babies in mind, and each product works hard to nourish, hydrate, and gently soothe skin from head to toe. Tubby Todd bath products are powerful and impressively effective, but are gentle enough for even the tiniest newborns.
We love that after a spaghetti disaster or a messy day on the playground, bath time gives us a fresh new start. We’ve created our BASICS Bundle to get you started, and to help keep you and your little ones clean, fresh, and moisturized all day long. We hope your family feels the same joy from these products as we have. Now let’s get tubby!
MOTHER MUSE 