Why we made it in Minnesota.
Not California, not New York. A small batch facility within driving distance of two of our four suppliers.
Sunnbalm is produced in a small batch facility in Minnesota — not California, not New York, not any of the usual cosmetic-manufacturing addresses. People ask us why.
The first answer is that two of our suppliers — the tallow renderer and the apiary — are within a four-hour drive. The cattle whose tallow we render are grass-fed on Midwestern pasture. The bees whose wax we use overwinter in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Keeping production local meant the supply chain for two of our four ingredients is roughly 250 miles long instead of 2,500.
The second answer is that Minnesota has a culture of small, local food and craft production that aligns with how we want to make this product. Our facility is in a building that also hosts a microbrewery, a cured-meat shop, and a small commercial kitchen. Everyone there knows everyone else. When we have a batch failure or a sourcing question, we walk twenty feet and ask another producer. It's the opposite of the contract-manufacturer dynamic that dominates the cosmetics industry, where formula and brand are different companies on different coasts and quality drifts between them.
The third answer is winter. We chose to start an outdoor-skin-coded brand in a state where the sun barely shows up for five months of the year — and the longer we live with the contradiction, the more we like it. Sunnbalm isn't a beach-only product. It's a daily balm. We make it in a place where daily means 'every day, including January,' and we think the product is better for it.
Production runs in monthly batches. Each batch goes to a couple hundred customers max. We are intentionally small. Scaling is on the roadmap, but only if scaling preserves the relationships we have with our four suppliers — and only if our facility partner can grow with us. If it ever comes to choosing between making more product and making it the same way, we'll choose the second.
That is a defensible philosophy when you have one product. It will be harder to defend in five years if we have ten products. So far, we have one product, and we plan to keep it that way for a long time.
If you're in Minnesota and curious — yes, you can visit. We don't run tours but we do meet customers who want to see the process. Email us.