PBN MANUFACTURING AWARDS 2020 | Overall Excellence, fewer than 50 employees: Pure Haven LLC
PURE HAVEN LLC’s owners and managers work under the banner of a deadly serious mission, presented in pretty packaging.
The company’s mission is to remove noxious chemicals from daily life by offering toxin-free skin lotions, shampoo, makeup, cleaning products, sunscreens, dog shampoo and more than 100 other household products in order to minimize the risk of cancer.
“Ninety percent of cancers are caused by environmental sources within our control,” said Bruce Jensen, co-owner and CEO of the Johnston-based manufacturer. “If we can educate families to reduce their toxin burden, we can help eliminate some causes of cancer in their lives.”
Jensen cites a 2015 paper published in Nature, a journal of science, that said 70% to 90% of cancer risk could be from external factors.
Pure Haven’s message seems to resonate with customers. Jensen said the company, which he bought in 2016 with three other co-owners, hit $12 million in sales in 2019 and expects to see sales of $20 million this year.
The company has 45 employees, 23 of them at the Johnston plant, Jensen said. While retail outlets do not offer Pure Haven-made products, “consultants” sell them via “party plan” marketing, similar to Mary Kay and Tupperware, Jensen said.
Now, Jensen said, Pure Haven has 3,000 consultants that sell the $300 monthly minimum in product.
He said the company acquires consultants entirely through word of mouth, mostly customers joining as consultants. Miranda Inglis, vice president of operations, calls the consultants “mini entrepreneurs.”
“They go to a gathering and decide to join because they want the products and want to share them with friends and family. It is a grassroots movement,” Inglis said.
Pure Haven’s main message is that its product ingredients are nontoxic and fresh, without harmful preservatives.
Those browsing the website will also see a page titled “ingredients to avoid” highlighting ingredients often found on labels of mainstream products, from “parabens” to “butylated hydroxytoluene.”
“You can be natural and use plant-based ingredients in your product and still put tons of toxic chemicals in there that are petroleum based,” a company spokesman said. “Our facility is a [U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified] organic manufacturing facility, and we live to a higher standard than organic.”
Pure Haven, which employs an in-house chemist, also spent the better part of three years trying to develop a body butter that could be effectively preserved. However, the creaminess and water content in the butter made it difficult to create a long shelf life for nontoxic products.
But last April, Pure Haven found a solution by “stacking” ingredients, Inglis said. This breakthrough allowed the creation of a broad-spectrum preservation technology that the company calls “pure protect.” When pure protect is ultimately folded into the company’s whole product line, it will increase shelf life of products to that of their chemical-laden counterparts, usually longer than a year, Jensen said.
The difficult problem of a short shelf life inherent in nontoxic ingredients forced the company to spend years crafting a solution. “What could be perceived as a competitive disadvantage is now a competitive advantage” that combines longer preservation with nontoxic ingredients, Jensen said.
The second half of 2019 brought further progress, Inglis said, when the pure protect preservation technology allowed the company to offer probiotics and prebiotics, which are elements that defend the skin and feed the microbiome of the skin.
This development translated into strong sales for Pure Haven, Jensen said. “The last two quarters of 2019 is when growth exploded,” he said.
Pure Haven’s bottom-line mission, Jensen said, is educating people for the benefit of their health. “We are not fear mongers,” he said, “but we do what we do because we don’t trust other manufacturers to take that mission as seriously as we take it.”
COVID-19 UPDATE
As a producer of skin care products, Pure Haven LLC is considered an essential business. Its 50 employees on the production line have pushed through the pandemic with no interruption of work, co-owner and CEO Bruce Jensen said.
Early on, even before masks and gloves became commonplace in workplaces, the staff donned protective gear and stayed focused on the job, Jensen said. Managers restructured the work area to space people farther apart and prohibited people from eating lunch in groups.
Jensen said one of the biggest challenges of this period has been finding supplies, mainly bottles and raw materials to make its products. That pinch has forced the company to diversify its supply chain.
“We typically have two packaging suppliers that we … worked with in the past,” Jensen said, “now we have 30 suppliers.”
Supply-chain problems also have stretched out the lead time for manufacture and delivery, in some cases from a normal lead time of 24 hours to a pandemic-era lead time of 12 weeks.
