What's a Value Added Product?

Before we started this new venture, none of us really knew what a value-added product was. Although we had been to farmer’s market and purchased many farm to table items, we didn’t really know what the term “value added product” fully entailed. You would think growing up on a farm, we would have a fine-tuned understanding of this term. When in fact, we used so much of our home-grown items, we never thought that value was added to them.

So for the few of you that may be as uninformed as we were, a “value added product” is something that your crop will be able to add value to. For example, the lavender essential oils that we use add value to our handcrafted products. The lavender buds add value to neck wraps for relaxation and the lavender used in the bug spray adds value as a natural bug deterrent with a calming aroma. Sometimes the value is a financial value. But sometimes the value is increasing the effectiveness, usefulness or attractiveness of the item.

One of the biggest challenges we’ve had is developing just the right combination of ingredients to offer a premium quality luxury item. Anyone can get online and find a recipe for a bath bomb, sugar scrub or lotion. The key is coming up with our own quality recipe that produces consistently great products. This process involved many failed recipes and many shared samples with family and friends. Honest feedback was the only way we were able to land the perfect combination.

Lessons learned…take copious notes every time you mix a recipe. For example, we made bath bombs that worked great early in our testing process. However, we did not take detailed notes, and lost the element of perfection. Ultimately after many more test batches, we created the perfect blend. We’ve been told that our bath bombs are as great if not better than the well-known Lush bath bombs. The best part is that we make them here in Fairmont, WV. You are supporting a local small business instead of a box store or high dollar department store price tag. We are proud to say that every one of these bath bombs are personally handcrafted by us with the highest quality ingredients.

Growing up we watched mom always working on projects and learned that one keeps working on something until you can say “I did it”. So, that’s what we did with our products, we continued to work on them until they were perfection. Now, we continue to test new items and will release each of them online once we are 100% satisfied with the final product. Thanks to our friend and family for the honest feedback and willingness to sample our products until we achieved perfection on every item we offer.