Beauty of Maine

Buying local is all the rage these days, and here in Maine it's easy to extend this philosophy to personal care products. We've all heard of Tom's of Maine, the natural products superstar which was bought by Colgate-Palmolive in 2006 and retains it's Kennebunk manufacturing plant.

And many of us know Westbrook-based Mad Gab's for it's lip balms and salves adorned with whimsical labels of smooching moose and smiling lobsters. But we Mainers have many more choices went it comes to homegrown soaps, lotions, scrubs and salves.

Nested into the coastal community of West Rockport, Avena Botanicals has been cultivating huge herb gardens and selling herbal lotions, elixirs and tonics for 24 years. Founder Deb Soule says she started by mixing up herbal extracts intended for medicinal use and sold them through the mail. Later, she added body care products when customers requested them.

"I wanted to provide good quality products to people in rural areas," Soule says of her decision to use catalog marketing.

Today, half of the company's more than 200 products are sold to retailers around the country and the other half are sold to catalog and online shoppers. One of Avena's best sellers is the Heal-All Salve. It's been a staple of the company's product line since 1985, and the formula has never been changed. The salve helps heal cuts and skin irritations and is used in many cancer centers to treat radiation burns.

Avena's herbal apothecary and three-acre organic garden - which supplies 70% of the herbs used in the company's products - are open to the public year-round, Mon.-Fri. from 9 am-5 pm. Do-it-yourself herbal classes take place in the summer.

For Eli Arlen, the 32-year-old founder of Brunswick-based Safar Bodycare, the journey to selling Maine-made body care products began with a skin problem.

"I developed eczema and couldn't find anything that would work for my skin," Arlen says. "My doctor recommended I find a natural product without chemicals or perfumes."

But she couldn't find anything on the market made without harsh ingredients. So 10 years ago Arlen, who also runs a private massage therapy practice, began experimenting with simple things such as unrefined olive oil, hemp seed oil, shea butter and beeswax. The resulting cremes were just what her skin needed. She shared the mixtures with friends and family members and soon realized there was wider demand for the products.

Two years ago she started Safar and currently sells her line of soy and nut-free cremes, balms, bath salts, oils and scrubs on the web and in natural food stores. Right now, Arlen is working on a bunch of new products, including face cremes, clay masks and body scrubs. It's a meticulous process, with lots of experimenting and testing.

As Arlen explains, "It's really easy to make a creme, but it's really challenging to make a great creme."

- Avery Yale Kamila