What is your name?
Laura Reid, owner of Ethics Supply Co.
What do you make?
We create a line of adventure inspired bath and candle products.
Tell us about a day in the life of you!We try and get on the trail as much as possible but a normal day involves creating new scents and designing products. We spend a lot of time in the warehouse shipping, managing orders, filling salts and getting the candles ready to ship.
What’s unique about your process?
We travel down every trail we create a scent from, gathering as we go, a bit of damp earth, a twig…something that reminds us of the area. Then we work on the scents, once we feel we have it, we often times return to the location to make sure it truly is representative of the areas we are so fond of. We hand pour our own candles using a combination of organic coconut wax, vegetable wax and white non bleached beeswax.
If a candle fragrance described your personality, what would it be and why?
The inspiration for the entire line came from watching thunderstorms in Zion every year on my birthday. I thought, wouldn’t that be cool to be able to bottle up the experience, that was our first scent and we actually placed it for Joshua Tree- Morning Thunder, because it really, we feel anyway, captured the experience of a desert thunderstorm. So I would say that one means the most to me, as well as starry night which is based on stargazing in Great Basin, which is one of the least visited national parks and four hours from anywhere so the night sky is absolutely amazing, it brings tears to my eyes. That scent is meant to capture to the cold night air with a hint of bristlecone pine which is what Great Basin is known for. Both those scents describe my love for the outdoors and the breath taking experiences one can have there. I consider those experiences spiritual, holy in fact, where you feel the quiet healing your soul as you experience the majesty in the moment.
What images, people, places and things inspire you?
Red rocks…I absolutely love red rocks and red earth, I love Zion with Virgin river flowing the center surrounded by spectacular red rock peaks. As far as people. we are huge fans of folks who have struggled to overcome something that has changed the world- Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, Ghandi, notable Native Americans, we are really into featuring them right now because of their struggle and perseverance, I feel they possess something our culture has lost, I feel when they are mistreated it is akin to destroying beauty, they are beauty to me in their care of the earth and animals and their desire to live in community. We are also focused on the plight of North Korean refugees and are designing a candle to try to bring awareness to their quest for freedom and how we can help.
Where do you live? What is your favorite thing about your surroundings?I live in Ventura California and love it, we live near the beach and I find the sea such an inspiring and healing place- two scents come from that- salt+light and live loved, i also enjoy that Ojai is in my backyard so it makes it easy hike when there is time to do so.
Share one thing about being a maker that might surprise people.
Just how much love and care goes into this, myself and my team try our best to create products of quality, I can say that each of us give 100% into this, whether we are creating a scent, designing the packaging or shipping out the product. We love what we do and we love one another, We have become a family. It is harder than I thought it would be, I had this dream of traveling about in a Bowlus travel trailer (which is made locally) and creating scents. The reality is this is a lot of work, we try and hike whenever possible and we consider it such an honor to have our products in peoples homes, it brings us great joy to think that it has resonated with people and that they can experience the wilderness even in an urban environment.
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