Affordable Natural Skin Care at Sugar Bear Skincare

This post about natural skin care is brought to you by my sponsor, Sugar Bear Skincare!

I love finding out more about brands I work with and use, so today I’m excited to share a special Q&A session with you from our fall sponsor, Sugar Bear Skincare. Their natural skin care products are handmade in North Carolina, and are 100% all natural, paraben free, and cloth diaper safe! Plus, no dyes or perfumes! You’ll want to get to know this brand!

Jen Pliska, mom and owner, gave me a detail background of how her company was born.

A Year With Mom and Dad: What inspired you to start Sugar Bear Skincare?

Jen @Sugar Bear Skincare: We started cloth diapering our son Parker and found out that we wouldn’t be able to use traditional diaper creams anymore. I began researching the products available and learning about what makes a diaper ointment cloth safe. I found a lot of what was available was kind of pricey. I decided I would come up with my own.

During my research I started to learn all about the chemicals in most traditional skincare products. I was horrified at what I was learning. I couldn’t continue to let my family cover their bodies in all of these harmful chemicals. I began researching how to make other skincare essentials that my family needed. Eventually what I ended up with was the Sugar Bear Skincare product line. My husband convinced me that there was a definite market for my products.

What should we name this new company?  Sugar Bear Skincare was launched in January 2013 (when I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter Blake!). My husband and I decided that it should be named after the inspiration for its creation, my son Parker. In our house at bedtime we would say to him “It’s bedtime for Sugar Bears,” and he would respond, “night, night” and then one of us would take him up and tuck him into bed.

I feel very strongly that providing high quality natural products for your family shouldn’t cost you a fortune. Everyone no matter the income level should be able to afford to purchase natural products, especially for their precious little Sugar Bears. Because of this I have chosen to price my products so that they are affordable to everyone.

A Year With Mom and Dad: How does family life and your business life work together?

Jen @Sugar Bear Skincare: Juggling home and business life can be quite a challenge some days. It was a huge change for me to go from being a stay at home mommy with little more on my schedule most days than playdates or doctor appointments to starting and running a company from the ground up. There are many late nights in our house after the kids have been tucked into bed that we spend making products, working on our website, responding to emails, ordering supplies, packaging, labeling, shipping, etc. I try to do work during the day when the kids are napping. Sometimes my little one, 5 month old Blake, will ride along on my back in a baby carrier while I work. My son, 2 ½ year old Parker, “helps” in the office by reorganizing supplies.

On Saturdays, Blake joins me at the farmers market while I sell our products. My husband, Tom, is an invaluable asset to our company. He designed our logo and does all of the website and label design. Sugar Bear Skincare wouldn’t exist without all that he does! No matter what I always put my kids and family first. I am a mommy first and a business woman second.

A Year With Mom and Dad: What’s one product you make that you are simply in love with right now?

Jen @Sugar Bear Skincare: I absolutely can’t live without our Tiny Heinys Diaper Rash Ointment! Of course it is by far the best diaper ointment I have ever used, but I’ve recently discovered another use for it. My littlest Sugar Bear Blake is in such a hurry to get big that she has already started crawling. Her little knees get bright red and irritated from cruising around the carpet all day. I’ve been putting the Tiny Heinys on them in the evening to soothe them. It works like a charm!

A Year With Mom and Dad: How do you source your ingredients?

Jen @Sugar Bear Skincare: We spent months formulating our recipes and thus purchasing ingredients from all over. Some ingredients were higher quality than others and we narrowed down our choices based on that. It would certainly have been simpler to just order everything from one or two places but we wanted to make sure we were using quality ingredients that yielded a quality end product. Therefore, our ingredients come from a number of different places.

A Year With Mom and Dad: Can you give us a sneak peek at what might be coming up for Sugar Bear Skincare?

Jen @Sugar Bear Skincare: We are really excited to launch a sunscreen/bug repellent this coming Spring. We have been researching FDA testing facilities currently and hope that it will be ready by the time spring break rolls around again. We used it ourselves this past summer and it worked great! We know that it will be a hit, we just have to get the proper testing done in order to be compliant with FDA regulations. The sunscreen will be a non-nano zinc and the insect repellent component will be our current blend of essential oils (citronella, lemongrass, cedarwood, and eucalyptus).

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Thanks, Jen! And, I love how Sugar Bear Skincare lotions and diaper rash ointments come in stick form to keep your hands from getting messy! Don’t you think that’s a great idea!?

Check out all the Sugar Bear Skincare products to find affordable natural skincare for your family (Jen is right – they are very affordable! Even the most expensive product is just $15 but most are under $10). Follow Sugar Bear Skincare on Facebook!

This post was underwritten by Sugar Bear Skincare!