What: Garden-inspired beauty
and skin-care line
Who: Ellen and Jack Davies of
Davies Gate
Where: Irwindale,
California
When: Started in 1993
How much: $4,000
Being a jewelry designer like her mother didn't make Ellen
Davies happy, but taking her mother's advice to pursue a
business with the botanical soaps she made did. "I happen to
be a passionate gardener, and I love beauty and skin-care products.
It was a way to get those two together," says Davies.
She and her husband, Jack, took $4,000 in savings to buy paper
wraps and labels for packaging, then worked with a small supplier
in France to create a custom formula from which they ordered a
couple of pallets of bar soap. Because they started their company,
Davies Gate
LLC, in their apartment, "we literally sat on soap boxes
for furniture," Ellen, 39, recalls.
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Jack, a lawyer who's since joined the business full time,
handles the legal aspects as well as other business duties. Ellen
plunged into the creative aspects, including handling calls.
"I'd get a call for our customer service department, put
them on hold and change my voice," laughs Ellen, who now has
12 employees.
Booking accounts with The Studio at Fred Segal and other fine
boutiques, first-year sales were $60,000; the Davies' alluring
aromas now have them projecting 2003 sales of $11 million to $12
million. And although the Davies have expanded from one item to
160, their spending habits haven't ballooned. "There are
two types of people: those who look at the top line, and those who
look at the bottom line," explains Jack, 39. "We've
always been bottom-line [types]."
- April Y. Pennington
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