May 23, 2017

Meet Karen Mandell of Kiss Me In The Garden in Northridge

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Mandell.

Karen, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We started our business in our home 25 years ago. I have a fragrance allergy and sensitive skin and could not find many fragrances that I not only liked, but could wear without having an allergic reaction to.

We have spent those 25 years developing our unique line. A great deal of time and thought has gone into the design and ingredients of each product. We make everything that we sell in our factory in Northridge, California. The choice to do this (when most companies don’t make their own products) gives us extraordinary quality control as well as the ability to make a super high quality products and still sell them at a competitive price. We are always on hunt for new and exciting ingredients and incorporate them into the product when we discover them.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As my father always says, “If it were easy, everyone would do it”. And that is the TRUTH! It’s never easy. It’s a constant struggle to find the very best way to stay competitive, relevant, profitable, motivated, etc….

In the beginning, we had another factory making most of our products. A year into our business, they called us in to a meeting to tell us that we were not “big” enough for them to continue producing for us, that they were interested only in working with “large” companies. They left us devastated, we were only selling what they made for us. This easily could have put us out of business. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to purchase some equipment and had eager employees willing to learn along with us. Today, we produce everything that we sell. We also pride ourselves on servicing all types of customers, from big to small and all with the same consideration and care.

Kiss Me In The Garden – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We manufacture beautiful and great smelling bath and body products. We specialize in fragrances for people with fragrance allergies (like me). The products are also paraben-free, phthalate-free, earth friendly and not tested on animals.

We concentrate on the union of two things:

1) Making products with only ingredients that will actually improve the look and feel of your skin (not elements that are just listed to “hype” the product – meaning they look good on the label but aren’t actually included at a percentage that would be beneficial to you.)

AND

2) Making sure that each product is presented in such a way that you would be happy to leave it out to decorate your nightstand, your kitchen or your bathroom (rather than put it away in the medicine cabinet).

Those have been our two primary goals for all of the years we have been making bath and body products.

We started this business in our kitchen 25 years ago, during our first year of marriage. Both have come a long way and we are very proud that we never lost site of the original intent, to make products that feel as good as they look. We are also happy to say that after 25 years of working together every single day, we are STILL happily married!

Everything is made fresh daily in our factory in California, in small batches.

Because there is no middleman, we can provide the very highest quality product at a competitive price.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
There is no single “most proud of” moment for me. It’s actually a daily “gratitude” that I focus on.

Each day we receive orders and customer reviews and each time someone writes to us about how much they love our products and appreciate the design and quality, I am proud.

If you look for the “big payoff”, you will always be disappointed in business.

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