Owning a business was never part of Lisa Loeffler’s plan, but after her husband’s battle with a tumor and a journey in faith, Pure and Simple Soap is breathing new life into Loeffler’s love for her family and natural skincare.
After the diagnosis of Loeffler’s husband with a brain tumor in 2009, she and her family chose to combat it naturally instead of through chemotherapy, radiation, and biopsy. “[My husband] knew [his] quality of life would be affected,” Loeffler said. “With brain surgeries, they really don’t know how you’re going to come out of each surgery, and they guaranteed we would have to do it multiple times.”
Their lives had to change dramatically after his diagnosis. Loeffler was making weekly drives to Atlanta, Georgia, to find clean, natural products to use that she couldn’t find at home. “We couldn’t detox at the doctor’s office and then eat chemicals at home,” Loeffler says. “When I first started reading labels, I was like ‘this can’t be good, these words that I can’t pronounce, they can’t be good.’”
Those chemicals weren’t just the ones they put in their bodies; it was what they put on them. Her family made an all-or-nothing approach to treating the tumor naturally, and having chemicals around wasn’t an option for them. After research and the help of a friend, she started making soap for her family at home to steer away from unnatural products.
Loeffler was making more soap than her family could use and started giving them away as gifts, and people wanted to buy them. “My husband, I think, saw that as a potential [business] way before I did,” she said.
Lisa had been selling her soaps at the Clarkesville farmers market and using a website her husband set up for her, but she still never saw her craft as a brick-and-mortar store. She thought of it as a hobby, something she could make enough money from to cover her cost of supplies.
Loeffler said that she believes that her husband knew her soaps could become a business to help support herself and her family after he passed away in 2014. After his death, she closed her carport and turned it into a soap kitchen. “That’s when I took it seriously,” she said.
She operated out of her carport for five years before she felt like God prompted her to consider opening a store. She toured buildings around the city, but her efforts were discouraging. The available spaces were too big and needed a lot of work that Loeffler couldn’t take on. On her drive home, she passed a building she’d passed nearly every day for 12 years that had been vacant for at least four, and it clicked. She was in her store within two months.
She was still unsure she was making the right decision in opening a physical location, and erring on the side of caution called her shop a pop-up. A month passed, and she decided to stay for the year. Now, more than a year later, she says she loves it. “I really never expected it to be a business, but I think my husband did, and I think the Lord did,” she said. “This is therapy. When my husband passed away, I had my kids, and I had my products.”
Lisa has built a network of other women on a similar journey; some widows, some married, but all business owners in Habersham. Owning her own business has helped her see her community from a different angle. “I never saw the value in that before, the whole shop local thing,” Loeffler says. She says she was always one to hunt down the best price, but now that her involvement in the community has changed, her stance on buying something based solely on price has shifted. “Sometimes, the [products] that cost more are better quality, and you actually get to meet the person who made it– or very close to the person who made it, and you establish a relationship. I see the value in that now.”
She says there’s a satisfaction in making something that someone wants to buy, or helping someone heal from a skin concern. Over the last seven years, she’s created new products and gifts that bring her joy. “It’s just been really fun, I’ve really enjoyed it,” Loeffler said. Years ago, she says that she had to explain the benefits of natural body and skincare to potential customers, but the climate around her product is changing. “First-time people that I’ve never met before […] want to know where [kinds of soap are] on the shelf,” she says. “They’re starting to see the value of [natural products]. They’re starting to see the connections between chemicals and cancer, or chemicals and dementia.”
Loeffler is creating a place for people like her, who have made the switch to natural products, to get the things they need close to home for a fair price. “I don’t want people to not be able to do this because they can’t afford it,” she says.
For people that want to open a business, Loeffler says your priority should be passion. “It can’t just be about the money,” she says. “I love doing this; I really think that if you want to do something on your own like this, it has to be something you really love doing.” She recommends diversifying your sales to have funds to fall back on during ups and downs in your business and starting at home to establish a reputation and client base before opening a store.
“I feel like I’m still learning so much about business, and here I am in the middle of it, I actually have one, and I’m still learning. […] This just happened, this wasn’t how I planned it, so I’m just taking it one step at a time,” Loeffler says. “This is up to the Lord; this whole thing started so clearly, not me. Clearly, this was what the Lord wanted for me and my family, and I’m just letting him [lead me] every step of the way.”
You can meet Lisa and try her Pure and Simple Soap at 1050 North Main Plaza Drive in Cornelia, Georiga.
