ABOUT US
Chagrin Valley Soap & Salve is a small family owned and operated company dedicated to crafting high quality, healthy and effective skin and hair care products that will nourish your skin and be kind to our planet.
A product is only as good as the ingredients used to make it.
Our ingredients are USDA certified organic, sustainably produced, cruelty-free and ethically traded.
Every ingredient has a purpose and we will always use the best quality ingredients to make the best safe and effective skin care products available.
All of our recipes are invented, created and manufactured in our facility in Solon, Ohio.
- Nothing is outsourced.
- We oversee the entire process for every product to ensure maximum freshness, consistency, and perfection.
- We do it all ourselves--from start to finish--from our family to yours!
Our mission is a simple one . . .
To use the power and simplicity of nature to cleanse, soothe, heal and protect your skin.
Our Family
I may have created this business, but we would not be where we are today without our Chagrin Valley Soap Family. We are a group of people who share a common trait--we love the work we do.
Our shop is full of laughter and creative energy that inspires and motivates. We share ideas, we share a vision, and we are rewarded with a sense that our time together makes a difference. Although when I awake on a snowy morning I would love to sleep in, I look forward to my day because of the people with which I spend my time. That is extraordinary!
This is our entire team--Left to Right: Anthony, Christina, Kate, Sarah, David, Sam, Ida, Howard, Ben, Lindsey, Christine, Jenna and Katie
Yes, we really are a small business. We accomplish all we do with a small, super dedicated and passionate team!
CERTIFIED ORGANIC SKIN CARE
One of the greatest things about purchasing USDA Certified Organic skin care is what you don't get in your products!
Organic certification provides you with a guarantee . . .
- that the product ingredients were produced without the use of toxic pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), sewage sludge or irradiation
- that assures you that your skin care products are free of the synthetic chemicals often used in the skin care industry
- that raw ingredients and finished products are handled, packaged and distributed without risk of contamination
Our customer base includes the growing ranks of health-conscious people who prefer natural and organic skin care products to those made with artificial, synthetic ingredients.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion over the labels on personal care products.
The term "Organic" is often used as a marketing hype to entice consumers looking for more natural products for their family. The word “organic” should not be used unless the product ingredients, as well as the manufacturing process, are certified as organic by a USDA recognized certifying agency.
Since we believe that what you put on your body is as important as what you put into your body,
Organic Certification is something that we take very seriously.
Organic certification is the only way you can be sure that a company's product truly complies with organic standards.
Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve is certified by a USDA accredited certifying agency, OEFFA (The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association), to assure the organic ingredients and manufacturing processes in our organic products follow the USDA’s guidelines.
The OEFFA is a grassroots organization, dedicated to promoting and supporting sustainable, ecological, and healthful agricultural systems.
CHAGRIN VALLEY SOAP & SALVE ORGANIC CERTIFICATE
WHY BUY FROM US
Chagrin Valley Mission
- To use fresh, sustainable ingredients to craft wholesome, safe, natural and effective skin and hair care products free from artificial ingredients and harmful chemicals.
- To "harness the power and simplicity of nature" to cleanse, soothe, heal and protect your skin.
- To operate a business in which our vision for healthy skin, a healthy lifestyle and a healthy planet is guided by our Core Values.
Chagrin Valley Core Values
- People (Our Customer Community): Our greatest asset
- Integrity and Honesty: "Do unto others …"
- Community Responsibility: Respecting our customers, our planet, and our country
- Quality: Only the best
- Innovation: Always dream. "To boldly go …"
- Attitude: Together we can!
- Education: Listening, learning and discerning fact from fiction
- Fun: Turning dreams and ideas into reality
Our shop is full of laughter and creative energy that inspires and motivates. We share ideas, we share a vision, and we are rewarded with a sense that our time together makes a difference!
We are Different . . . and
What Makes Us Different Makes Us Better!
Chagrin Valley is not just another skin care company. We are on a mission to make our customers healthier and our Earth a little greener. We are committed to healthy skin, healthy people and a healthy planet.
The Formulas We Create Are Unique: Our recipes are designed in house using knowledge from research and ingredients from nature. We use certified organic ingredients--herbs and flowers, vegetables and fruits, sustainable oils and butters and pure essential oils to create products that will nourish your skin and be kind to our planet.
Quality: We hand blend all of our own products in small batches to ensure freshness, consistency, and perfection. Think of it as pure nutrition for your skin and hair!
All Natural: It's all about ingredients! Our products have always, and will always, contain nothing but natural ingredients. There is nothing artificial, nothing synthetic, no GMO’s, just wholesome natural ingredients you can trust.
Organic: We are USDA Certified Organic Company. We work hard to obtain organic certification each and every year. Organic certification is the only way you can be sure a company's product truly complies with organic standards. It is a constant reminder of our commitment to our customers and our planet.
Customer Service: We are especially proud of our customer service. Our goal is to listen and respond to every customer comment or question with well-researched and constructive answers. Our customers have easy access to our staff by email and telephone to answer questions about our products.
Environmental Conscience: It is our practice to use raw materials that are sourced in an environmentally and ethically responsible manner. We are Leaping Bunny Certified--Cruelty-Free. Our palm oil is certified sustainable by the Rainforest Alliance and we buy Fair Trade whenever possible. Our products are biodegradable and minimally packagedwith recycled and recyclable materials. Our packaging is over 99% plastic free. Our natural ingredients will not add synthetic chemicals into our ecosystems.
Knowledge: Our products, developed by Ida, a registered nurse with a Master’s degree in biology and a minor in chemistry, are safe and effective. The goal is simple--to use the power of nature to cleanse, soothe, heal and protect your skin.
Value: Our product prices per ounce are some of the lowest in the market. While of course profit is important in order to carry on with any business, it is not what drives our passion.
Our customer community includes the growing ranks of health-conscious people who prefer natural and organic skin care. Customer feedback is a fundamental component of our research and development. Our customer community spurs the innovation that creates our new product lines.
We were one of the first soap companies
to make truly all natural soap
and to disclose ALL of our ingredients.
Our customer base grew because our products worked and our customers trusted us.
We regularly get emails from our customers telling us how our products have helped them.
A few years ago I received a thank you email from a customer that made me cry. It was from the father of a young teenage girl. She had a terrible skin disorder on her back and was so embarrassed that she refused to go to sleep-overs or even go swimming. She had been to many doctors, but nothing they gave her worked and some things even made her sick. A family member told them to try our soap.
After a few weeks, his daughter came to him, lifted up the back of her shirt and showed her father that her back was completely clear. Needless to say, he has been a customer ever since.
The quality of our product is extraordinary, the value is excellent and most importantly the loyalty and trust we have earned from our customers have grown our company from a small cottage business into an internationally recognized skin care company.
Natural handmade skin care - from our hands to yours. That is our promise to you!
We are constantly amazed that so many people have found our little company. Check out some of the countries and territories where we have customers.
Supporting Small Business & Local Business
Supporting small businesses encourages individuals to be entrepreneurial, which fuels innovation and keeps the idea of the "American Dream" alive. We patronize small farms, farmer's markets, buy local organic ingredients from our grocery stores and have also found some wonderful locally owned and operated businesses from which to buy ingredients:
Rising Star Coffee Roasters: Located in the old Ohio City Firehouse, Kim Jenkins is the visionary who decided to begin the operation they refer to as "progressive coffee roasting". Bringing in 100% Direct Trade certified, Rainforest Alliance certified and USDA organic certified beans. They roast some Organic Sumatra beans EXTRA dark just for us.
Great Lakes Brewing Company: One of the many reasons we LOVE Great Lakes Brewery is that if you go to their website and look at the top menu bar, one of the main categories is “Sustainability”... how many breweries can boast that!? Being a staple of the Cleveland and Midwest craft brewing scene for 25 years now, Great Lakes is dedicated to a quality handcrafted product with socially and environmentally sound practices. What more could you ask for? You can find their spent grains in bakery bread and restaurant desserts around town and they even use ‘low-fill’ bottles to send to local handcraft ice-cream makers. They watch over our local water sources and work with the city on more initiatives than we can count. Oh, and they make AWESOME BEER. We use a variety of their beers in our Honey Beer soap and our very popular Honey Beer & Egg shampoo bar!
Stutzman Farms: Stutzman Farms, in Millersburg, is located right in the heart of the beautiful Ohio Amish farms of Holmes County. Monroe Stutzman runs the main Stutzman grains farm, he grows and harvests a long list of great crops and sells them whole grain or milled in the traditional stone-ground fashion. We use their Certified Organic Whole Oats, stone-ground Oat Flour and stone-ground Cornmeal in MANY of our soap bars, including our "Avocado Oats & Shea", "Cornmeal & Honey", "Goat Milk Oatmeal & Honey", "Oatmeal Spice" and even our "Honey & Oats" Dog shampoo!
McKenzie Creamery: Located just 20 miles East of us, the McKenzie Goat Creamery is the ‘child’ of the amazing Jean McKenzie. Jean and her son Rob run a warm and successful operation. Visiting their farm is one of life’s true pleasures. Rob provides us with fresh Goat’s milk as we need it and we sure appreciate it! We use Goat’s Milk in our Goat Milk Oatmeal & Honey soap, Olive & Shea soap, Carrot & Honey Complexion soap and our Carrot Milk & Honey shampoo bar!
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS
COMMITMENT TO DECREASED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Our business began in my home, located on the Chagrin River in the Chagrin River Valley, where each day I was reminded that the health of our planet is affected by the impact of our daily activities.
We work hard as a family business and a family to be vigilant of the impact we have on the environment.
Every day we reuse, recycle and compost to reduce waste and our impact on the environment. Here are a few simple things we do to help keep waste out of our landfills.
- Use real dishes, silverware, cups, and glasses instead of disposables
- Use rags and hand towels instead of paper towels
- Use a water filter instead of plastic bottled water
- We recycle everything
- Our shredded office paper becomes packaging material
- We collect packaging materials from our neighbors
- We reuse all the packaging materials we receive
- Our trash “cans” are the plastic pails in which our oils were packaged
- Our product packaging is 99% plastic free
- We are mindful of every possible way to keep waste out of our landfills
As a company that dedicates itself to all things natural, we work hard every day to become more "Green." Going forward, we will continue to monitor our personal daily activities as well as our business practices always looking for alternatives that are better for Mother Earth and her inhabitants.
There is a Native American proverb that says...
Treat the earth well:
it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children
I have children and grandchildren. The future belongs to them which is why we strive to run our family life and our business life in an environmentally responsible manner.
COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY
What is Sustainability?
"Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (The Brundtland Commission, 1987)
A Native American proverb expresses sustainability in a lovely way:
"The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives."
The pond is our beautiful planet, Earth, and we are the frogs.
We have a responsibility to use our resources wisely and to protect them for ourselves and future generations.
Chagrin Valley Soap & Salve not only works hard to make the best skin care products out there, but we are mindful of our impact on the environment. While we may only be only one small frog in our large pond, we believe responsibility is critical at every level.
It is our practice to use raw materials that are sourced in an environmentally and ethically responsible manner.
- We buy Rainforest Alliance certified sustainable palm oil (read the article “The Palm Oil Controversy”).
- We do not use ingredients like Rosewood, Sandalwood or Frankincense essential oils that come from endangered or threatened plants.
We also support sustainable, wholesome agriculture by purchasing natural and organic ingredients.
Growing organically improves the quality of our environment by protecting our land and groundwater from contamination and by promoting the use of sustainable resources and the conservation of soil and water.
We do our research and buy from local farmers, small businesses and companies that share our commitment.
We look for companies that not only promote environmental stewardship and sustainability but also support fair trade. Fair Trade practices promote fair wages, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and improved social standards.
Our goal is to do what we can as a family and a small company to consume as little water as we can from the pond in which we live.
COMMITMENT TO BIODEGRADABLE INGREDIENTS
What Does Biodegradable Mean?
By definition, biodegradable means capable of being broken down by the action of living things, like natural bacteria, into simple substances that are not harmful to the environment.
Chagrin Valley Natural Soaps are Biodegradable
If You Are a Camper or Backpacker Please Read On...
There are many soapmakers out there with good intentions who are claiming that their biodegradable soap or shampoo is safe to use in rivers and streams. Even biodegradable soap can eventually pollute lakes and streams if it is not used sparingly.
The bacteria that break down soap are present mostly in the soil. That means that when you wash, please be sure that your soapy rinse water ends up in the soil away from fresh water sources like lakes, rivers, and streams.
COMMITMENT TO CRUELTY-FREE
Chagrin Valley Soap & Salve is certified cruelty-free by Leaping Bunny.
The Leaping Bunny Program was developed in 1996, by The Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC), to identify and support companies that are doing their part to help eliminate the unnecessary use and mistreatment of animals to test cosmetic products and ingredients.
The CCIC is made up of eight animal protection groups including the Humane Society of the U.S., as well as groups from Canada and Europe.
At Chagrin Valley we obviously do not test our finished products on animals (other than human volunteers), but what about the raw materials, the ingredients we use? Many products display labels claiming that their finished product is ‘not tested on animals’ but this does not guarantee that the product ingredients are actually free from animal testing.
The CCIC Standard is a pledge that a company makes to remove animal testing from all stages of product development. Our pledge to buy ingredients that are cruelty-free is integrated into the purchase order contract for all of our suppliers. We also do not sell into markets that require animal testing.
COMMITMENT TO NON-GMO INGREDIENTS
At Chagrin Valley Soap & Salve we do not use ingredients that contain GMO's!
Although you do not eat products made by Chagrin Valley, we are very concerned with the environmental impact of GMO’s.
For example, farmers and environmentalists are worried that crops that are genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides, such soybeans, will result in heavier herbicide use, further polluting the groundwater, lakes, and rivers.
COMMITMENT TO ECO-FRIENDLY PACKAGING
Chagrin Valley is not just another skin care company.
We are on a mission to make our customers healthier and our Earth a little greener.
We are committed to healthy skin, healthy people and a healthy planet.
We know that from a marketing perspective packaging is extremely important. While perusing store shelves, whether consciously or unconsciously, many people pay more attention to how a product is packaged than anything else. Since that first impression often leads to a purchase, most skin care companies spend a lot of money and time on creating pretty packaging.
I know that packaging is important to our customers as well. However, our customers are not looking for "pretty" packaging, they are looking for eco-friendly packaging from a company with an environmental conscience.
GREEN PACKAGING
Chagrin Valley is committed to Eco-Friendly Green Packaging
We are not just another skin care company.
We are on a mission to make our customers healthier and our Earth a little greener.
We are committed to healthy skin, healthy people and a healthy planet.
We know that from a marketing perspective packaging is extremely important. While perusing store shelves, whether consciously or unconsciously, many people pay more attention to how a product is packaged than anything else.
Since that first impression often leads to a purchase, most skin care companies spend a lot of money and time creating layers and layers of pretty packaging.
While the packaging is important, our customers are not simply looking for "pretty" packaging, they are looking for quality products and eco-friendly packaging from a company with an environmental conscience.
Packaging Materials
As an eco-friendly company, Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve must:
- minimize packaging materials
- use materials that have little environmental impact
- use materials that can be recycled by our customers
- re-use materials we have received
We believe firmly in the three "R's," reduce, reuse and recycle.
Our company believes in minimal packaging.
Our packaging is Plastic-FREE!
Read more about Chagrin Valleys eco-friendly plastic-free packaging HERE