Like many indie brand owners, Melinda Olson founded Earth Mama Organics in 2002 after she had success making her own skin care formulations for pregnant women. Today, her Clackamas, OR-based company is selling products through Whole Foods and Walmart and she’s helping moms and babies in hospital NICUs and homes across the country.

How has being a nurse influenced how you formulate?
Powerfully. Being a nurse, I understand the impact of what women use in and on their bodies, and the physiology of how these formulas impact pregnant women and their unborn babies. Doing no harm is our No. 1 priority. It also means that I’m deeply dedicated to the importance of blending evidence-based research with the traditional use of plant-based medicines. It’s from that perspective that Earth Mama meets its everyday objective: to formulate products that are safe, effective and do no harm.

Why enter the pregnancy/post-partum category?
When I started Earth Mama in 2002, women had very few natural options to support the common discomforts of pregnancy, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding and baby care. Because pregnancy is not a dis-ease state, and doesn’t necessarily need to be medicated…unless it does. A perfect example is that morning sickness is a common discomfort of pregnancy that doesn’t need to be medicated with conventional medicine. Hyperemesis gravidarum is excessive and pernicious vomiting that really does require medical intervention. But there’s gotta be an in-between—and that’s why I started Earth Mama Organics.

What is Earth Mama’s hero SKU—and why do you think people love it?
We have several! One of the first products I formulated was Organic Diaper Balm, an organic calendula-based solution for baby’s bum. It continues to be a hero unto itself, because it does exactly what we intended for it to do, which is: to be safe, effective and do no harm. Organic Milkmaid Tea—a blend of organic herbs traditionally used to support healthy breast milk production and promote healthy lactation—continues to be loved by literally millions of women who use it for breastfeeding one child after another, because it works. And it works safely.

You have been a successful “indie” organic personal care brand for many years, which gives you some perspective. What changes have you witnessed in the organic personal care category—and have they been mostly good, mostly bad, or some of both?

One of the big changes we’ve seen is around certified organic personal care products. When we started, that was rare—almost unheard of. We realized in 2004 that we could print whatever we wanted on our label, but there was no way for our customers to judge the voracity of our claims without third party verification. For this reason, we decided to have all of our product claims and labels verified by Oregon Tilth (you’ll see their seals on our products, which means the ingredient claims are truthful. Back then, it was a revolutionary idea—but now, in 2019, our customers are really beginning to understand the organic certification.

We’ve seen a great shift, in that consumers are JUST NOW caring about organic, clean beauty—and some seem to be unclear about the rules for organic labeling, more and more companies are willing to go to the trouble and expense to verify their organic claims. The result is that more and more consumers are understanding the value of organic—and most importantly, how to read labels.

Did you ever think about tossing in the towel?
What was going on, and how did you get through it?
I love this question because nobody’s ever asked me this! I have a Bachelor’s of Science degree in nursing—but I never took any business courses, which means I went into building a business without a roadmap. Were there times when obstacles arose? Absolutely, of course—this is life. So my honest answer is no. I didn’t ever think about tossing in the towel. My attitude was always, “I don’t know the answer…yet.” I learned over time that there’s almost always a workaround. The most important thing is to hire really smart, good people who understand the company mission. Because when you do, it’s easier to find your way out of whatever roadblock you’ve come up against. And also? Sometimes you just have to be creative and go off-road.