Borrego's Skin Care Entrepreneur
Last updated 4/3/2019 at 10:56am
Leslie Greathouse is working hard to ensure that Borregans, women and men alike, have clean, moist, and properly exfoliated skin to carry around, and present to others, in our desert environment.
A 13-year resident, she has run Greathouse Body Blends out of her home for the past six years, with products at the Desert Pantry, Palm Canyon Mercantile, and Borrego Valley Inn.
Greathouse also developed an online presence (GreathouseBodyBlends.net) so folks can have products shipped. After Broadhouse gets to work on the three golfers with beards who volunteered in her research and testing, she’ll have a “Beard Oil” on the shelves, too. Follow-up story to come on that.
At the Desert Pantry, owner Rodger Guswa has graciously given Greathouse a very prominent “end cap” location as you walk past the register. Her products include the best-selling 8 oz. “Fresh” Hand & Body lotion (plus Lavender, and Lemongrass) at $12.99 (travel size at $4.74), a coconut oil liquid soap for $10.99, and bar soaps at $6 made with natural glycerin-based goat’s milk or hemp seed oil, including a glycerin body bar soap prosaically called, “Soul of the Woods.”
What makes Greathouse’s skin care products unique is four-fold: They are all handcrafted, she bottles and labels the products herself, she uses no preservatives (paraben-free), and she is filling a niche in her cottage industry by focusing on the needs of desert-dwellers. Come summer time, her products will surely aid in replacing what Mother Nature taketh away.
Greathouse believes very much in her products, so much so that if her business was limited only to herself, family, and friends, she says, “I would still make my soaps.” But looking forward, she would like to expand her business and open up a full retail shop here in Borrego.
