Earthy Good was founded by the owner of Kiss Naturals, Mike Wiesel. Having had many years of experience with children’s all-natural DIY kits, his dream to expand this concept to adults grew over the past 10 years. With the growing awareness in popular culture of the benefits of using natural, organic products and the need to reduce our effect on the environment, the time was finally right. The Earthy Good line of products was born in 2020 with both low-waste initiatives and a focus on natural, raw ingredients in mind.

The process behind creating the line allowed for a world of new opportunities. The Kiss Naturals line was designed for children and thus had a formula to follow in terms of packaging and product possibilities. Our Kiss Naturals kits have packaging that is colourful, bright and that convey a lot of information on one box. The products are limited in design to be tailored to be simple and safe for children to create. The creation of the Earthy Good line allowed for a realm of new possibilities in terms of products and packaging. Our adult line of DIY kits has simple and clean-looking packaging which allowed us to cut down considerably on waste.

The team we have at Earthy Good helped to bring our dream of an eco-conscious product line to life. Our team members Arianna Ambler and Jaren Cerf were both instrumental in developing our line to be as low waste as possible. Jaren Cerf has a background in zero waste living, she wrote a book on the subject called “Talking Trash.” We were able to create a line that we have dubbed “approaching zero waste” by eliminating any unnecessary components and using eco-friendly materials. Our kits are packaged in cardboard boxes, and the raw ingredients in each kit come in eco-conscious containers such as metal tins and glass bottles. Other components in our kits are designed to be reusable such as silicone tubes and bamboo utensils. The kits are even packed with biodegradable wildflower seed paper that you can plant in your garden! All these materials were hand-picked by our team to fulfill the dream of having a product line that is environmentally friendly.

When it came time to formulate our products, we wanted to make sure that we got it exactly right. There is a fine line between a product being healthy and organic and a product being pleasant to use and practical. We wanted to make sure we nailed both of these elements. We must have played with the formulation of the toothpaste alone over 500 times to get it exactly right. We didn’t want our products to just be a novelty item, we wanted them to be something that our customers would love and incorporate into their daily life. Each of our kits is formulated with raw, natural ingredients that are mostly organic too. We believe in the power of natural ingredients and the benefits they can have on your health and well-being. By creating these DIY kits, we wanted to carry out our vision of having healthy, natural products that can be made by hand in the comfort and safety of your own home.

All our products are hand packed with love by real humans at our facility in Cowansville, Quebec. Just like with the Kiss Naturals brand, we wanted to continue to be a Made in Canada company. We value the importance of creating Canadian jobs and supporting our local economy. By keeping our brand close to home, we are able to oversee production to ensure that the raw ingredients we use are always of the highest quality and that each kit is made exactly how we intended. This also helps to further our environmentally friendly initiatives because our products are produced locally which reduces the carbon footprint of having them produced overseas and shipped to North America. Each of these small choices helps to promote our company values of protecting the environment.

Once we were happy with our final products, we decided to launch our line on Kickstarter. Originally the Kickstarter launch was scheduled for March 14, 2020 to coincide with the Toronto Green Living Show, where we were exhibiting. The idea was to launch at the show, then finalize the Kickstarter campaign at the London Natural Products Show in mid-April. Great plan! The only problem was the pandemic had its own plan. The Toronto show was cancelled, right after we finished setting up the booth. Then we found out the next day that the London Show was also cancelled. This was certainly not the launch plan we had in mind, but it led us to having to promote our line in a much more personal way. We moved forward by connecting with stores one-on-one and interacting with future customers on social media.

In hindsight, while the pandemic may have stalled our launching plans, it has given us a great opportunity to make this brand feel a lot more personal. We have had so many wonderful conversations about zero-waste initiatives and natural products with many of our customers. Our environmentally friendly goals are shared by so many of the people we have had the chance to interact with and it really does emphasize how it is a group effort to collectively make a change.

So what does the future of the Earthy Good line look like? As we move forward, we are constantly looking for new ways to improve our line. We are continuing on our zero-waste journey as we try to upgrade the materials we use until they truly generate zero-waste. We are also listening to the valuable feedback we receive from our customers and retailers to learn more about the products that we can add to our line. While the Earthy Good story has just begun, we are excited for the future of bringing more awareness to the benefits of natural products and supporting the collective efforts to reduce our impact on the environment.