About Tallowbourn — Grass-Fed Tallow Skincare

I turned our kitchen into a little lab and started making small batches by hand, playing with ratios of tallow, jojoba oil, shea butter, beeswax, and honey until I got the feel and texture right. My wife initially thought I was crazy for putting beef tallow on my skin, but she started to see there was something to it, because my dry skin was responding to it. She started using it herself and was surprised how much better it worked than her expensive, big-name lotions.

A few weeks later we drove up to New York to visit my parents, and I brought my mom a jar. Honestly, I didn't think much of it. I handed it over and pretty much forgot about it.

Then three or four weeks later she called. She wanted to know if I had any more, because her skin looked and felt better than it had in years. She told me it was the first thing in a long time that had actually made a difference for her.

That was the first time I thought maybe there was something real here. I figured she might just be being nice. She's my mom. But then our friends were asking for jars. Then their friends did. It kept spreading on its own, slowly, one person at a time.

At first, I had no idea what I was doing on the business side. I was working in biotech and had zero e-commerce experience. I set up the website and eventually listed on Amazon because that's where most people shop, and in the early days I was thrilled to get a single order a day. I used to say I couldn't go to bed until that one order came in.

Then one a day became ten, then more. I'd be up past midnight filling orders after work, still making every product by hand, until I had to admit I couldn't keep running a real company out of my kitchen. Finding the right manufacturers wasn't easy, since I have very high-quality standards and we were still a very small brand. Most manufacturers want six-figure first orders, which wasn't happening for someone making balm at the counter. After a long search I found two family-run, US-based manufacturers that take the same care in making the product as I did, with the added benefit of running in FDA-registered facilities.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Amazon reached out and said they wanted to tell our story. That floored me. There are tens of thousands of sellers, and I was one guy and a kitchen. I visited their HQ2 in Arlington and got to share how it all started.