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Below is the article that started us off printed in the

Idaho State Journal, Sunday March 4, 2007.

    Youths create body-care line

     CHUBBUCK — When school lets out, the Judd children start mixing and packaging their secret formulas.

     The five siblings, ages 7 to 16, have become a business team. They recently started combing the city for vendors to carry their line of homemade skin-care products, which they call IHaveHives.

     They use only natural ingredients — such as lavender,  eucalyptus, beeswax, almond oil, coconut oil and olive oil — in their lip balms, hand creams, body butters and bars. Exact quantities and a few specific ingredients are trade secrets.

     The young entrepreneurs learned the basic concepts for making their products by studying a host of online recipes. The rest was trial-and-error.

      “Sometimes we’ll mess up when we’re making it, so those will be our special offers,” joked 12-year-old Gennavie.

      14-year-old Heidi added,  “A lot of times errors will happen if there’s a lot of people around and the radio's on and people doing homework.”

     But for the most part, their recipes have exceeded their own high expectations and business has started to take flight. In fact, IHaveHives was an official corporate sponsor of a recent Telemark Skiing competition at Pebble Creek Ski Area.

     And in the case of their winter blend spearmint Buzz Balm, botching a batch proved to be serendipitous.

     The batch of lip balm was softer than planned — but perfect for a winter day when other brands tend to harden and become uncomfortable. Among skiers and snowboarders, the Spearmint winter blend has been a hit. The industrious children have since concocted a firmer Buzz Balm appropriate for summer months.

    Starting as a spin-off

     On a warm and sunny winter day, Heidi lifted the cover of a wooden box with flaking, gray paint, exposing about a dozen bees crawling inside the lid.

     She explained the queen bee can typically be found in the very middle of the bottom box.

     When harvesting honey — and the wax it’s stored in — Heidi said avoiding a dark, bee-produced resin called propolis can be a hassle.

     On more than one occasion, her mother, Gina, has spent the better part of the afternoon cleaning the house of tracked-in propolis residue, which is thick as tar and just as hard to scrub off.

     IHaveHives started as an offshoot of their father Brett’s efforts to begin a beekeeping hobby.

     The family’s rural Chubbuck home, where a goose named Harriet can typically be found in the back yard splashing in a blue baby pool, is well suited for beekeeping. It has an orchard in the side yard that includes 15 apple trees, three cherry trees, two peach trees and two pear trees.

     “My dad kept bees when I was little, and I always talked to my husband (Brett) about how cool it was to have fresh honey,” Gina said.

     Brett bought out an area beekeeper’s colonies and equipment in 2005. That fall, the family had a good honey harvest, and Paul figured he’d expand his beekeeping operation to sell honey on the side.

     His children came up with their own business model to put   their father’s excess wax to good use.

      Unfortunately, the bees couldn’t survive the rigors of a harsh winter of 2005, coupled with an infestation of mice in the hives.

     Undeterred, Brett bought three more hives in the spring of 2006. One of the hives died, and although two colonies survived, they failed to yield enough honey and wax to harvest last fall.

     He plans to buy more bees within the next month.

     Because the bee operation has yet to take hold, the children have been buying wax from a Salt Lake City company in the interim.

     They melt it in an electric fryer and pour the wax into muffin tins in order to store it in small, ready-to-use portions.

     Family members, friends and teachers raved about the initial creams and lip balms the children produced for Christmas gifts.

     The oldest Judd sibling, 16-year-old Amber, was the first to sell the family product. She needed money for Highland High School’s girl-ask-guy dance. She had little trouble finding willing buyers.

     “They were like, ‘You made this? Are you serious?’” Amber said. “They liked the texture, how it soothes the lips. To me it makes your lips tingly so it’s like it’s healing. They also think the labels are cute.”

     As is the case with most businesses, the five partners with IHaveHives have their own specific job descriptions. The girls — Amber, Heidi and Gennavie — develop most of the recipes and provide a great deal of leadership. Heidi also oversees marketing of the product. Gennavie keeps track of inventory.

     Arthur, 10, is the Webmaster. For now, he sends material to his grandfather, who has better software for posting it on-line. Soon, Arthur hopes to get the software himself and take over sole Internet responsibility. Baden, 7, is the packaging expert.

     Amber and Heidi attend Highland. The other children are enrolled in the Pocatello Community Charter School.

     Running the business has been an education in itself.

     They’ve all learned the importance of buying ingredients — especially costly essential oils — in bulk to get a better rate. They’ve also come to realize much of their profits must be invested back into the business to produce more product.

     They keep incredibly precise records of their expenses and know the cost of aloe juice in each container of body butter, for example, to the 10th decimal point.

     After expenses, they each get a share of the income, although they’re required by their parents to put half of the money into long-term savings for college.

     Though their parents stay out of the business, letting the kids run things and learn by doing, they, too, have made sacrifices.

     Gina gave up her craft room so the children could convert it into a Buzz Balm office. More importantly, Mom and Dad paid the start-up costs for the business, hoping it will become a source of income that will make it unnecessary for the children to get part-time jobs while in school.

     “They can be entrepreneurs and be successful entrepreneurs in a couple of years,” Gina said. “We feel like school is important, and if they’re doing well they wouldn’t have to juggle another job on top of that.”

     For his part, Brett often asks his sister Heather Judd Nicholas, owner of Fringe The Styling Salon, for advice on good scents to infuse in skin creams and lip balm.

     Heather now carries the assortment of IHaveHives products at her business, located at 115 S. Main St. They’ve been good sellers at $3.50 per 2.2 oz. container.

     “Once people try them, they really, really like them. I’ve been using the products for a while, and I’ve always liked them,” Heather said.

     Heather believes her customers like IHaveHives partly because it’s locally produced — and by children. But the main reason for the product’s success, she believes, is that the children have worked hard to produce high-quality merchandise. She rates IHaveHives as an equal with national brands such as Burt’s Bees.

     “I was probably the most skeptical of all (about their business). I have access to any type of cosmetics and any type of lotions,” Heather said. “When I finally did try (IHaveHives), I was like, ‘Yup, I’m liking it.’”

    Making a fresh batch

      Arthur glanced at a typed orange body bar recipe taped to a kitchen cabinet door and said to himself, “How much? It’s 2.2 ounces.”

     He grabbed three small wax discs and weighed them on an electronic scale. Then he dropped the discs into an electric fryer to melt them.

     Heidi pulled a jar of hot coconut oil from the microwave, measured the appropriate amount and poured it in with the wax.

     “It has good moisturizing qualities,” she explained before adding a touch of vitamin E, a preservative.

     A few moments later, after the wax had cooled and begun to harden on the edges, Heidi poured in a few tablespoons of essential oil, perfuming the room like orange zest.

     “The oil will evaporate off if it’s too hot, and you have to wait until it starts to cool,” Heidi said, explaining the importance of timing.

     When everything was perfect, Arthur turned a tiny nozzle at the base of the fryer, filling a little, white container with a hot, orange stream of body bar.

     Meanwhile, Gennavie and Baden held hairdryers, melting shrink-wrap over labels on a batch of natural-scent body butter.

     Mom watched them work, occasionally reminding them to make sure the labels were all on straight or offering advice on the recipe.

     “I can’t tell you how many measuring cups and spoons have been lost for the cause. We’ve poured a lot of money into it,” Gina said.

     But the results speak for themselves. Gina no longer uses any other kind of lotion or lip balm.
 
     “I’m quite impressed,” she said. “I love to tell people, ‘My kids made this’.”

     The Judds are quick with a sales pitch.

     Amber always carries a few containers of body butter or Buzz Balm in her purse in case of a possible sale. She’s found that teachers make great customers, and the girls at school can never get enough of what she’s selling.

     Arthur likes to point out that his product is all natural, but still effective. Sunscreen is artificial, but avocado juice — which has an SPF factor — is always a good choice, Arthur explained.

     Baden likes to push IHaveHives products with orange scent, his favorite.

     The business partners never approve a new recipe without the corroboration of at least two siblings.

     “In many ways, they’re still just like every kid everywhere. There are still plenty of bumps and bruises along the way, and bruised egos, and, ‘I wanna do that.’ But I’d say doing this business in a lot of ways has put oil to the wheels of the family machine,” Gina said, while driving her children to Industrial Tool & Supply, 1800 Garrett Way, to drop off products to be sold at the business.