YAMALI, a family brand with creative roots

I never imagined that our little soapmaking idea would turn into such an adventure! Here is a bit about Yamali!

I live in the Allegheny Vallley of Western Pennsylvania with my large homeschooling family of thirteen and I make all Yamali products in our kitchen. My dad is generously letting me use a large corner of the basement where the 'Yamali shelf' stands. The shelf is filled with soaps curing in stacked berry boxes, my growing collection of organic ingredients, and lots of soapmaking gear.

What I love about my small home-based business is well, the home-iness of it. It is challenging at times to keep up with the soapmaking and selling admidst an already busy household, but to me, that adds flavor to an otherwise plain business life. Most days I....Clean up a big breakfast mess for a big soapmaking day. Let my little brother stir the soap while I blend the essential oils. Chase down the toddler with the bubble wrap and exchange a tickle to get it back. Wrap soap with my adorable baby sister that "waps sowp hersewlf". Teach my younger sister about ph tesing and send her all over the house with testing strips. Gather soap ideas from my 9 siblings (the 6 year old recommended "clean pool smell" and I reply, "Thank you! I will look into it!"). Unmold a new soap in the basement near the laundry area, where my mother is working and she says, "Ahhh, smells good!". Cut soap with a younger brother that likes to use his muscles to push down the wire cutter onto the hardening soap log. Sit at the computer desk with my little sister on my lap while I update my Etsy shop. Life is very good. I am very blessed to have my wonderful family.

Yamali is my family's brand. Yamali is the name of my little sister spelled backwards (and she loves to say, "Yeah, I am Yam-ahl-ee spwelled bwackwards!"). Soon after Yamali was "born" in Spring of 2010, one day my mom and I were brainstorming our branding and "look" for the business. Using a few colored sharpie markers, my mom wrote down our business name, Yamali Naturals, and beside it sketched a golden yellow and orange flower shaped almost like a coneflower. A year or two later, when I was redesigning our labeling, I found the old piece of notebook paper with Mom's drawing of it, scanned it onto our computer, touched up the image and it has been our logo ever since. I sent the artwork to a custom soap stamp company and we were able to design a soap stamp using our flower. It is now used to stamp every new bar of soap coming off the cutting block. Like our company, our 'Yamali Flower" is unique. It tells a story about our blossoming family soap business while representing simplicity and creativity. After all, we started this business as a family with a seed of vision and watered it daily with creativity and imagination. Now, by God's grace, Yamali is producing sweet fruit. We are meeting new people, sharing knowledge, seeking wisdom and learning beside our extended Yamali family on this journey of life. It's not just a business...we consider our customers to be friends and family, we love communication because we want to get to know you. We have met many wonderful people through the soap adventure and we wonder everyday, "Who will we meet next on our journey?!".

Okay, onto the nitty gritty (actually quite lathery) soap. At Yamali Naturals, our soaps are handcrafted using the traditional cold process method. We use only high quality all natural ingredients in all of our products. Everyone's idea of natural is different. Around here, we consider "natural" to be along the lines of organic, raw, wholesome ingredients free of ANY synthetics, or man-made ingredients (except lye, which is 100% needed in the soap process in order to turn greasy oils into luxurious soap). There are sooooo many ingredients out there that are BAD for your skin and overall health - it is really pointless to list all of them. Instead, we like to focus on the GOOD things that we put into the soap - let's think positively!

We use only natural ingredients, and as much unrefined raw organic sustainable oils as possible. As far as scents go, we only use pure essential oils (with the exception of some customer requests for seasonal scents like Coconut Lime, etc - these soaps are scented with quality fragrance oils). Locally sourced ingredients are used whenever possible. For our LeAra Lavender soap we use locally produced raw milk from Wilson Farms, home of LeAra Holsteins. When it is available, we like to use local honey, but we usually eat it before I can use it for soap! To learn more about the ingredients that we use (and every recipe is different!) check in on our Etsy listings. We hope to share our knowledge (and suds) with you!

Yamali Naturals - We're all natural, are you?