Lacey and Ryan Ogden discuss the making of Bath Sorbet.
Bath Sorbet can trace its origins to YouTube. After 3-year-old Paisley Ogden saw a bath bomb video with little toys popping up in the tub, she had to have them at her fourth birthday party. Her parents, Ryan and Lacey Ogden, couldn’t find any locally, so Lacey used an online recipe to make them herself. The toy-laden favors were such a hit that partygoers came back to Lacey — could she make more? Fast forward several fulfilled orders, and in 2016, Bath Sorbet was born.
Today, the cheerful bath goods company has established shops in Yukon and Edmond and satisfies online customers worldwide. We recently met up with founders Lacey and Ryan Ogden to discuss what makes Bath Sorbet bubble over with success.
Tell me about the earliest days of Bath Sorbet, six years ago, when you were operating out of your home.
Lacey: I just put it out on social media: “If anybody would like bath bombs, we’re going to be making some,” and we sold over 200 before we even got our ingredients in. That’s kind of how it started for us.
Ryan: She came to me like, “I think we may have a little side business here or something,” and I was like, “Nah, there’s no way — selling bath bombs?”
What has kept you and this business going?
Lacey: Really early on, we had a large following, a niche, nationally. We’ve had customers in Canada, Australia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia; we’ve shipped all over. It’s just been really, really amazing that social media has allowed us that platform to be able to really grow from little Oklahoma.
Ryan: Our mission statement, if you will, is we want our company to be like a blessing to people. It’s a premium product, and we want to be able to offer it at a good price that people can enjoy.
If online sales were booming, why did you open a retail shop?
Lacey: We needed our house to be our home again. Very quickly people started hearing about us locally, and they wanted to come by and smell things and see things for themselves. We didn’t really know that we wanted it to be a storefront. You know, that wasn’t really ever part of our plan. We were just going with it.
We had somebody stop at our new Yukon location who said she’s been a customer in Wisconsin. She was coming back home from Texas, and she had to stop at our store.
Ryan: It means a lot when somebody’s driving out of their way, like an hour, to come to your store on their way home. You know, that’s pretty cool.
What are your bestsellers?
Lacey: The bath bombs, kid bombs — and then we have something called truffles, which are very similar to a bomb, but they have a lot of butters, so they are really moisturizing … Those are our three bread-and-butter products.
What accounts for Bath Sorbet’s ongoing success?
Lacey: Being able to adapt to trends and social media has been really important for us. And we’ve had really great staff members to help get us to where we are. Most of the people who are with us have been with us for years and years. They share our vision. They share our excitement about new products and ideas, so it’s a collaborative effort.
Ryan: For us, being a small business — starting out with $200 — in a retail industry and still being in business six years down the road, that’s because we have great people.
