It all started with soap! Linda White has been making soap for almost thirty years. After retiring from her day job in 2008, she started selling her soap locally at markets and fairs. The Healthy Soap Company was born and blossomed into a small batch manufacturing company. Known for her beautifully marbled and colorful, large-sized bars, customers returned over and over, saying this was the best soap they had ever used. Linda considered master batching, but eventually chose not to — batching 100+ pounds of soap was too restrictive for her personal touches. Hiring and training an assistant gave Linda time to really experiment with recipes, colorants, additives and patterns. Life was all about soap!
“Homemade soap need not be plain, beige or boring”, Linda
says. Individually crafted batches of soap are aromatic, feel luscious on your skin, and beautify in your bathroom and give personal touches. Using unique combinations of herbs, all-natural colorants, juices, milks, natural additives and scents that last the life of the bar, her soaps pamper every sense. She does this without compromising the soap’s health benefits for your skin.
The skin is our largest organ and soap can feed the skin. The Healthy Natural’s soaps contain nourishing ingredients to exfoliate, clean, soften and rebalance the skin’s Ph naturally, getting rid of dry, oily, blemished or broken skin! Linda believes that every home should use natural soap and skin care products, getting back to the basics of knowing what ingredients are in the products we use on our body.
Believing that what you put on your skin enters the blood stream, Linda sees quality body care as a health issue. Becoming more concerned about the Ph balance of people’s skin after seeing and hearing about more and more skin issues, Linda discouraged customers from using any products that contained potentially harmful chemicals. This concern, plus extra time in retirement, prompted Linda to create a line of natural face creams, body lotions, lip butters, scrubs and more. Almost as if being given an agenda, it was a seamless road to travel into making other products.
Her customers’ needs were apparent through their requests and suggestions. Linda set out to provide them with what was necessary to help the health of their skin. Business needs such as labels, containers and marketing were an interruption to Linda as she studied and researched, but her sister Laurie designed some labels one day for creams Linda was preparing for a weekend fair. Feeling she could not use The Healthy Soap Company name for creams, Laurie named them Linda’s Healthy Naturals. AFter some time, Linda’s two product names eventually merged to become The Healthy Naturals company.
At first, Linda was surprised her natural body creams and lotions were so popular. Then she looked at what was available commercially and understood – she could not find truly all natural creams and lotions on the market. Linda’s philosophy is that nothing should be put on your body that is not organic or as natural as possible. Believing that many large cosmetic company products are too expensive and contain chemicals that may actually harm your skin, The Healthy Naturals continues to provide reasonably priced alternatives.
While Linda promotes her products as natural, basic skin care, they are much, much more. Her creativity in combining skin-healthy oils and additives in her creams and lotions is truly wonderful. Linda does not just make one recipe — she customizes products for individual skin types and uses all high quality food grade ingredients. She does all this while providing very reasonable pricing.
After developing her line of body care products, and after numerous requests, Linda began teaching others the “how to” of soap making. This led to a complete line of classes for making all the body care products. Many of Linda’s students are now making and selling products. Linda is frequently asked “Why create competition for your own business?” Linda believes that getting back to the basics is primary and education is crucially important. Many people attending her classes have no idea what ingredients are in cosmetics. She endeavors to educate people to reading cosmetic labels as well as food labels promoting overall good health.
Linda’s classes include
- Soap Making
- Advanced Soap Making
- Creams and Lotions
- Bath and Body Basics
- Body Butters & Balms
- Natural Baby Care
- Developing your Essential Oils Medicine Cabinet
- Natural Perfumery
- Mineral Make-up
She jokes about the make-up class, as Linda rarely wore make-up. When asked to develop a mineral make-up class, she groaned. After studying this area, Linda was pleasantly surprised to find out that many minerals from the earth, although inert, are actually quite healthy for pulling toxins from the pores and giving UV rays / sun screen protection.
Linda is watching customers look younger, feel better self esteem, and is listening to quality testimonials. Dr. Bethany Chernich is using Linda’s cream on her little boy who has eczema. Dr. Christine White (no relation) personally uses her Mature Woman Cream and carries all of Linda’s products in her office. Others rave about their skin after using Linda’s Healthy Naturals. If you ask Linda’s about it, she’s amazed with the popularity of her products.
Linda credits the people of Missoula and all her students for being well educated and intelligent. They challenge her continually with questions and requests for custom formulations. Linda will even do a custom formulation fpr customers with allergies. Her products evolve and improve because of questions and requests that come from her customers. It is truly the fountain of youth and a formulation of youth, and yet so simple. You are welcome to dive in!
