The Customer Inspiration

I promised that I would be referencing some Douglas Adams in my next blog. After a conversation with the powers that be I have been informed that my blog should be a little bit more product focused. The suggestion being that perhaps my predilection for philosophy isn’t the best marketing mechanism.
 
Point taken. 
 
So here’s a story about moisturizer.  
 
One of the cool things that we have been able to do here since the very beginning is listen to people. I think most companies must start that way. I think many of them lose it along the way. If we ever do I’ll be disappointed. 
 
For the better part of last year we just had six products. Our scrubs, masque, exfoliant, and shampoo/conditioner. It was a pretty big step up from the year before but it still left some pretty wide gaps. If someone wanted to become a Maine Magic Mud customer exclusively we would not have been able to provide some pretty standard products. To fill the void we began brainstorming. A moisturizer was a pretty clear next step. The problem was we did not know how to make it our own. The rest of the products all had ingredients that made them stand out. Whether it was the mud or the kelp we had something that added value, something no one else had. Figuring it out with the moisturizer was more difficult. Up until that point we had a pretty clear separation. Mud was in the skin products; kelp was in the hair products. We even leaned into that distinction with some of our marketing. This was not going to work with a moisturizer. All our skin products were meant to be cleaned off after the fact (exfoliant, scrubs, masque etc.). This allowed us to incorporate our mud. Moisturizer is different you leave it on. In that scenario the mud would have been a detriment. Imagine applying moisturizer and having it be even slightly gritty. Trashcan. 
 
Luckily we had Chelsea. 
 
Chelsea was an early customer and had noticed our want of moisturizer. She got a hold of us and specifically requested one with Frankincense. She’d been putting Frankincense essential oil in her store bought moisturizer with amazing results but had not found one that came that way. We did some research into the beneficial elements of frankincense (there are many) and after some trial and error our frankincense moisturizer was born. We include a little of our kelp extract to help with rejuvenation (and keep our ocean based flavor) but the frankincense was exclusively customer inspired. Now the moisturizer is one of our most popular products and it all came about because we were able to listen, directly, to the needs and wants of our customers. That can’t change.  

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