Lavender Color and Scent

One might ask about our obsession with lavender, both the color and the plant. We have many pounds of dried lavender buds, lavender essential oil, lavender soap, a lavender stuffed lamb, lavender-colored clothes, and many rolls of lavender fabric.

The lavender color is a very peaceful pastel. So we decided to play it up in our marketing. A brand's color is extremely important. Colors have many implications. For example, red implies boldness. Blue is peaceful. Yellow and black are used for warnings and calling attention to things. Pink is very feminine. We chose lavender and gray as our company colors. Lavender is a delicate soft color appealing more to women. Gray is a gender-neutral soft quiet color. Both are appropriate for a company concerned about sleep.

The sense of smell is one of the most subtle ways to entice customers. Smells are associated with good and bad things in life. Cookies associated with the holidays remind you of good times with family. Balsam and spruce trees make me think of a crisp winter. Sour milk makes me sick. Even though the sense of smell is not as obvious as vision or hearing, its is often more memorable and triggers a deeper emotional response. Anyone in marketing knows how important emotions are. Lavender is slightly floral and sweet with a sharpness of camphor that opens up the nose. The higher the quality of the lavender, the less the sharpness, and the more floral. It is commonly used in aromatherapy for relaxation. Most people enjoy the subtle scent of lavender, even those who don't like floral potpourri and perfumes. It makes me think of pine sap and faint flowers, very relaxing.

We have two employees making our lavender sachets part-time. One is an honors college student who stuffs the sachets to pay for her rent and to earn extra spending money. The other is a high school student, and this is her first job. Her mother is using it as an opportunity to teach her the value of money.

Lavender and Gray Colors Are Coming Back!

Polartec® has finished production of our lavender and gray color fabrics! They are both the recycled soda bottle with spandex fleece. We will start production of SleepPhones in those colors in January, to be ready by mid-February. Some customers have been asking for those colors back, so we're working on it!

Lavender Soap Coming Soon!

We have been working with the owner of Annadele Sundries to bring you the best lavender soap with the highest quality ingredients available. They are a Pennsylvania home-based company that hand-makes soap. It takes weeks for the owner to make the all natural soap using traditional methods. The ingredients are saponified olive oil (for moisturization), saponified coconut oil (for rich lather), and essential oil of lavender. We use high quality steam distilled lavender oil from French Lavendula angustifolia. There are no petroleum or animal derivatives, sodium laureth sulfate (a strong detergent), or antibiotics (good germs on the skin keep the bad germs at bay). This adds to our line-up of products that are good for your sleep and for the environment.

SleepPhones in Tanzania

Wow! We have a SleepPhones order from Tanzania! We've had some orders previously from South Africa, but this is the first order from another country in Africa. We have a particular affinity to Tanzania because they produce Tanzanite, which is a lavender-colored precious stone. I have a few Tanzanite items of jewelry, including my engagement ring. And we like just about anything lavender. I didn't use to own any lavender clothing until we started SleepPhones. Since then, I've had a good excuse to buy lavender outfits - for work, of course. This person ordered a lavender sachet. I wonder if Tanzania's port is as strict as Australia is with dried plant materials. We can't ship lavender sachets to Australia because they would just cause the box to be opened and the sachet removed.

Anyways, Tanzania's a really cool country. It's home to the tallest mountain in the Africa: Mt. Kilimanjaro, the origin of the Nile River. It borders Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, and Lake Tanganyika, the deepest lake in Africa. It contains much of the Serengeti plain, where many Discovery Channel and National Geographic people spend their time capturing images of the wildebeest. Dr. Jane Goodall spent her days watching chimpanzees there. It's the idyllic African Safari location.

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Lavender Accessories

We are going to bring more high quality, all natural lavender accessories to the SleepPhones website.  We in the process of working with a local vendor to provide these products.  The vendor is a one-woman shop.  She has similar beliefs as I regarding skin and hair care products.

I believe that anything applied to the skin and hair should be at least somewhat edible.  That is, if I can eat olive oil, coconut oil, and lavender tea without getting sick, then I can apply it to my skin. If I don't eat petroleum, I won't apply petrolatum to my lips or skin. If I don't eat artificial (lab chemical) fragrances, FD&C Yellow No. 5 , or titanium dioxide, then I won't put it on my skin. Lye (originally from wood ash) is needed to render oils into soap and is the classic method of making soap. The soap we sell will be a lye-rendered vegetable-based soap that won't kill your child if accidentally eaten.

The skin is our body's biggest organ and it is very much in constant contact with our environment.  It absorbs and takes in as much as it puts out.  Shining sunlight on it helps our bodies create useful vitamin D. Rubbing poison ivy on it will cause an itchy rash for many people. Putting medicine on a patch of dry eczema can heal it. The skin has pores that secrete oils and salty sweat.  It releases water as a by-product of metabolism. The skin regulates our body temperature by opening and closing pores, controlling blood flow, and sweating.  It is not just a piece of dead leather to be scrubbed for cleaning and crudely oiled and painted.

There are many lines of products available claiming to be all natural. I think that it's a step in the right direction. But ideally, products applied to the skin should be of the same quality as what we eat because they are absorbed just the same.

Lavender SleepPhones Coming Back

We have been almost completely out of lavender SleepPhones for a few months now. We tried a few different colors, but couldn't find one that we liked as much as the original. So we are now placing an order with Polartec® to make our special lavender in recycled plastic bottles. It takes months to produce, so we won't have any lavender-colored SleepPhones until 2010, but we are bring it back eventually! Our sheep have approved the color sample.