{"id":75229,"date":"2024-11-21T10:38:08","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T15:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=75229"},"modified":"2025-02-03T08:35:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T13:35:06","slug":"how-a-kooky-california-mom-took-on-the-baby-care-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/how-a-kooky-california-mom-took-on-the-baby-care-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"How a ‘Kooky’ California Mom Took on the Baby-Care Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jessica Iclisoy, founder of California Baby, pictured with some of the company’s creams, oils and lotions made with sustainable ingredients. (Credit: Courtesy of California Baby)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, Jessica Iclisoy recalls embracing the “kookiness” of California, then better known for lava lamps, gurus and sprouts \u2013 lots of crunchy sprouts. “We were the first to \u2018avocado toast,\u2019” she laughs. “We were the first to \u2018quinoa.\u2019” By the time she had her first child in 1990, she was firmly committed to the West Coast’s new trend of “organic<\/a>” living\u2026 starting, of course, with the pricey baby shampoo at her local health-food store. Like a lot of new moms<\/a>, “I was happy to pay that extra cost for the health of my newborn.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as it turns out, what she was looking for \u2014 an organic, sustainable, and above all, safe baby-care shampoo \u2013 wasn’t actually<\/em> on the market yet. On a whim, Iclisoy, then just 22, compared the ingredients of the “all-natural” shampoo with a conventional (big-corporation-made) baby shampoo. Keep in mind, this was before Google. “I was at the library a lot,” she recalls, and randomly spotted a cosmetic chemical dictionary during one visit. She took it home. “I was feeling so good about my choices,” she remembers \u2013 until she did the research. “Lo and behold, the ingredients were exactly the same. The only difference was the marketing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That discovery changed everything. Angry at the deception, and concerned about carcinogens on her new son’s skin, Iclisoy began intensive research that eventually became a company \u2013 California Baby<\/a> \u2013 named for her “crazy and weird and kooky” homestate. Today, the 55-employee company makes over 200 baby products at its own FDA-registered, organic-certified manufacturing facility in Los Angeles, sourcing many of its ingredients from its own 100-acre farm in Central California. While she doesn’t disclose revenues, Forbes has valued<\/a> the brand as high as $330 million. Iclisoy, who launched California Baby in 1995 with a $2,000 loan from her mother, remains the sole owner.<\/p>\n\n\n

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To hear Iclisoy tell it, very little has changed about her attitude or borderline-obsessive approach since that day in the ’90s when she picked up that chemical dictionary.  “The thing that really drove me to develop California Baby — I was not starting a business,” she says. “This was investigation.” When she took a deep dive into the ingredients in shampoos, she found sulfates, parabens and synthetic fragrances, “three really, really nasty things.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sulfates, used by the Navy to degrease engine parts<\/a>, irritate skin and eyes. Parabens, used as preservatives, have been found in breast tumors<\/a>. And synthetic fragrance<\/a>, considered a protected trade secret? “It’s in everything,” she says, including candles and food. “You’re walking through the mall and you smell those donuts? That’s synthetic fragrance.” When she looked up synthetic fragrance in the chemical dictionary, “it said ‘known hormone disruptor,'” she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That got her motivated to find a solution \u2013 she still had a newborn, after all, and he still needed some safe shampoo. “A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. For me, I couldn’t go back,” she says. “You can’t unknow these things.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Iclisoy, who didn’t have a science background \u2013 her previous job had been working for fashion designer Azzedine Ala\u00efa \u2013  went to another library, this time at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I talked to the librarian – really, your librarian is your best friend,” she says. “I was like, ‘I need to find an alternative to sodium lauryl sulfate.'” The librarian pointed her in the direction of the trade periodicals for the skincare industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, Iclisoy read about a mild ingredient called decyl polyglucose<\/a>, developed in Germany that was “under the radar” as many mass manufacturers found it difficult to work with. So she called up a lab in New Jersey that specialized in it. “The chemist was so excited,” she says, “because nobody really wanted to take that time to figure out how to use it.” They struck up a relationship, faxing back and forth, and over the course of three years, Iclisoy used her kitchen stove to develop a non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, non-allergenic, natural shampoo.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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California Baby’s first product. (Credit: The company’s website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Encouraged by friends to sell it, Iclisoy next researched packaging options \u2013 and landed on a square-shaped bottle with a heavy pump. \u201cBecause I\u2019m thinking, I\u2019m a mom \u2013 I got a baby in one hand \u2013 I could do everything with one hand,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is a good stable bottle.\u201d A male business advisor told her \u201cthat\u2019s not going to work.\u201d But Iclisoy felt she knew her customer. \u201cI would give it to my girlfriends with babies, [and] they\u2019d go, \u2018Oh my God, thank you.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iclisoy began selling California Baby shampoo at her local health food store, Mrs. Gooch\u2019s Natural Foods Market, which was later acquired by Whole Foods. \u201cFor the first eight years, I was the demo girl at the end of the aisle,\u201d she says, persuading moms (successfully) to spend $15.75 on a bottle. \u201cI had one store, and then one store turned into two and three,\u201d she says. \u201cI was just hustling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning Down ‘So Many’ Offers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thirty years later, Iclisoy can often be found at California Baby’s certified-organic farm in Santa Barbara, where she posts dreamy photos on Instagram tramping around in green wellies<\/a> or racing through a lavender field<\/a> or picking calendula flowers<\/a> at sunset, using the tag FARM FRIDAY. (She also shares her weekly workouts under MOVE IT MONDAY). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iclisoy bought the farm in 2011, when the company’s previous organic farmer couldn’t keep up with demand (and “he wasn’t really enthusiastic” about her painstaking process, she says). It took her about five years to find the property, a former vineyard that sits on a rolling hill, about a mile off the highway. “It’s beautifully situated,” she says. “You’ve got the ocean to the north \u2026 the San Ynez Mountains behind us. There’s a wind exchange that comes in. It’s a very special part of California.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dried ingredients from the farm head down to the company’s “hyper-efficient” production facility in Culver City outside L.A. It’s both FDA-certified, as California Baby’s sunscreens, eczema lotions and diaper rash creams are considered over-the-counter drugs, and also organic-certified. “Holding those dual certifications is unusual,” Iclisoy says, “especially in manufacturing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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