Prices in the store are slightly lower than on her website, and customers have the benefit of asking Wehmeyer questions about the benefits of various ingredients and which product is best suited for a particular use. For example, her parsley lemon salt foot scrub not only feels good but also deodorizes tired feet. (Some of the herbs she uses are sourced locally.) The rich selection of scrubs, bath salts, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, bath salts (made from dried goat’s milk), spritzers — including “smoochie poochies” to keep your dog smelling fresh; Wehmeyer also makes and sells dog shampoo — air fresheners, and lip balms is complemented by other products she sources from elsewhere, including incense and hair brushes.
Besides goat’s milk, she uses cocoa butter and adds hemp, oatmeal and Castile oil, cooking the ingredients twice in her Green Street kitchen — a process that’s called “double milled” and results in a denser, higher quality soap, she said. She also works with 400 fragrances. It takes six weeks for the cakes to set. None of her products contain dyes, silicon (a kind of plastic that’s ubiquitous in commercial body products) or paraben, a preservative that’s omnipresent in liquid products and has a questionable effect on health. The cardboard packaging is recyclable.
A cake sells for $7.50, or three for $20. Most of her sales are through her website, edelweiss-soap-company.com. People tend to buy in larger quantities when they order on-line, typically spending $60 to $80 versus $20 in the store, Wehmeyer said. Prices include shipping, which is by priority mail.
Her sales have grown steadily in the past decade as she had built a loyal customer base. One advantage of her products is that they are consumables, which means people need to replenish their supply. She has shipped products to Norway and Australia, and sells to six stores around the country. She does her own packaging and is careful to include her website address on every product.
Wehmeyer said she adores living in Uptown, where she can walk to her store, shop at favorite specialty stores such as Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats, patronize the fantastic neighborhood restaurants, and even walk to the supermarket, cart in tow. “This is where you go when you grow up,” she said. “In Kingston you care less about what’s in the front yard than the books in the kids’ bathroom.”
