By Sara Busse
BECKLEY — Women from across the country telephoned Colleen Hurley in Beckley, complaining that their husbands were stealing their bath-and-body products for their straight-razor shaving.
Those women’s husbands grew her little soap business into The Gentlemen’s Quarter, a worldwide venture with sales in the United Kingdom, Mongolia, Shanghai, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Greece, Costa Rica, Canada and throughout the United States.
“I started out making women’s bath-and-body products — soap — as a hobby, thinking I would go to a couple of gun and knife shows with my husband and sell there,” Hurley said. At the time, she was working part time as a housekeeper at Glade Springs. “I was juried into Tamarack, and that’s when it took off.
“That’s where the story gets weird. Women from across the country would stop at Tamarack and buy my soap, and they loved it. But the calls started coming from those women saying, ’My husband keeps stealing the soap!’ and they wanted to order more,” she explained.
Hurley, 47, loves antiques and picked up a few old straight razors on eBay. Her research led her to an online shaving forum, StraightRazorPlace.com, where she joined an enthusiastic group of men dedicated to “wet” shaving using a straight razor. They had been informally referring to her products as “Colleen’s soaps.”
“I introduced myself, and I was the only girl there. They helped me to restore the old straight razors, and so I then told them, ’Guys, here’s the story with this bath soap ...,”’ she said. “I sent free samples to people in that forum, and they were all across the country. They came back and told me I had the best ’slick’ of any shaving soap, but I had lousy lather!”
Hurley discussed the lather issue with her friends on the forum. Her 2006 post highlights her fondness for the “cold process,” which allows the essential oils to retain their “goodness,” according to Hurley. “It’s the Cadillac of the soap world. ... Soap makers agree that cold-process soaps have a finer texture, a smoother grain.
“But they don’t lather very well as shave soap. They provide excellent slip and glide, they’re nondrying and great for sensitive skin, but with lousy lather.”
The learning process continued, and the men on the forum lathered with many incarnations of the soap before Hurley perfected her product. She quickly became the darling of the forum. To date, nearly 65,000 visitors have clicked on her link on the forum.
At first, orders were made via telephone and e-mail. “People on the forum called me ’the famous soap maker with no Web site,”’ Hurley said. She sought help from the Artisans Resource Center at Tamarack, and they helped build her first Web site.
“If my products and ideas are the seeds of this business, Tamarack is the gardener. They made so much possible,” Hurley said. “I’ve grown by word of mouth, and most businesspeople say they wish they had my problem of such big growth.”
She said her business grew 35 percent a year before the Web site, and “it grew 50 percent this past year, even in this economic downturn, thanks to the Web site.”
Hurley has no business or chemistry background. A graduate of Shady Spring High School, she credits the Internet and the public library for her self-taught skills. She’s quick to ask for advice as well.
“A lot of shavers are high-end business people, and I will ask them all sorts of questions. Most of my customers are over 40, college graduates, IT professionals, doctors, lawyers. A number of these men are business moguls who will talk to little me. They have been helpful with advice and support.”
Hurley does most of the work herself, with the help of one part-time employee, Jane Boyd, in the basement of her home. She rebuilt the space to meet FDA guidelines. “It’s like a certified kitchen, everything has to be able to be mopped, sprayed down with bleach water every day. But it still looks great, and people say it’s like an old apothecary, with all of the different bottles.”
She hopes to hire two more people to help with the production in the next year. She also would like to begin patenting her products next year. Until then, she’s protective of the formula.
“I’ll have one person do one part of the manufacturing, and then another person do another part, just being safe,” Hurley said. The new employees will allow her to get out in the field to set up more accounts. Recently, Cigar King of Skokie, Ill., and Scottsdale, Ariz., has requested her products to sell in the store following a comment made by one of their customers.
All of her business success aside, Hurley is proudest of her rapport with men and women in the military.
“For the past two years, some of my customers are soldiers. If I lock on to one and correspond with him, they end up being the recipient of a huge box of soap for shaving and bath for men and women. I have a big box ready to go to Iraq right now. If I had a child over there, I would want to know someone cared,” Hurley said. “It’s just a bath with soap, but if it makes one of those soldiers feel good, then that’s good.”
