Organic Living

Jessica Iclisoy, founder of California Baby, pictured with some of the company's creams, oils and lotions made with sustainable ingredients. (Credit: Courtesy of California Baby) Growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, Jessica Iclisoy recalls embracing the "kookiness" of California, then better known for lava lamps, gurus and sprouts – lots of crunchy sprouts. "We were the first to ‘avocado toast,’" she laughs. "We were the first to ‘quinoa.’" By the time she had her first child in 1990, she was firmly committed to the West Coast's new trend of "organic" living… starting, of course, with the pricey baby shampoo at her local health-food store. Like a lot of new moms, "I was happy to pay that extra cost for the health of my newborn." But as it turns out, what she was looking for — an organic, sustainable, and above all, safe baby-care shampoo – wasn't actually on the market yet. On a whim, Iclisoy, then just 22, compared the ingredients of the "all-natural" shampoo with a conventional (big-corporation-made) baby shampoo. Keep in mind, this was before Google. "I was at the library a lot," she recalls, and randomly spotted a cosmetic chemical dictionary during one visit. She took it home. "I was feeling so good about my choices," she remembers – until she did the research. "Lo and behold, the ingredients were exactly the same. The only difference was the marketing." That discovery changed everything. Angry at the deception, and concerned about carcinogens on her new son's skin, Iclisoy began intensive research that eventually became a company – California Baby – named for her "crazy and weird and kooky" homestate. Today, the 55-employee company makes over 200 baby products at its own FDA-registered, organic-certified manufacturing facility in Los Angeles, sourcing many of its ingredients from its own 100-acre farm in Central California. While she doesn't disclose revenues, Forbes has valued the brand as high as $330 million. Iclisoy, who launched California Baby in 1995 with a $2,000 loan from her mother, remains the sole owner. To hear Iclisoy tell it, very little has changed about her attitude or borderline-obsessive approach since that day in the '90s when she picked up that chemical dictionary. "The thing that really drove me to develop California Baby -- I was not starting a business," she says. "This was investigation." When she took a deep dive into the ingredients in shampoos, she found sulfates, parabens and synthetic fragrances, "three really, really nasty things." Sulfates, used by the Navy to degrease engine parts, irritate skin and eyes. Parabens, used as preservatives, have been found in breast tumors. And synthetic fragrance, considered a protected trade secret? "It's in everything," she says, including candles and food. "You're walking through the mall and you smell those donuts? That's synthetic fragrance." When she looked up synthetic fragrance in the chemical dictionary, "it said 'known hormone disruptor,'" she says. That got her motivated to find a solution – she still had a newborn, after all, and he still needed some safe shampoo. "A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. For me, I couldn't go back," she says. "You can't unknow these things." So Iclisoy, who didn't have a science background – her previous job had been working for fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa – went to another library, this time at the University of California, Los Angeles. "I talked to the librarian - really, your librarian is your best friend," she says. "I was like, 'I need to find an alternative to sodium lauryl sulfate.'" The librarian pointed her in the direction of the trade periodicals for the skincare industry. There, Iclisoy read about a mild ingredient called decyl polyglucose, developed in Germany that was "under the radar" as many mass manufacturers found it difficult to work with. So she called up a lab in New Jersey that specialized in it. "The chemist was so excited," she says, "because nobody really wanted to take that time to figure out how to use it." They struck up a relationship, faxing back and forth, and over the course of three years, Iclisoy used her kitchen stove to develop a non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, non-allergenic, natural shampoo. California Baby's first product. (Credit: The company's website) Encouraged by friends to sell it, Iclisoy next researched packaging options – and landed on a square-shaped bottle with a heavy pump. “Because I’m thinking, I’m a mom – I got a baby in one hand – I could do everything with one hand,” she says. “This is a good stable bottle.” A male business advisor told her “that’s not going to work.” But Iclisoy felt she knew her customer. “I would give it to my girlfriends with babies, they’d go, ‘Oh my God, thank you.'” Iclisoy began selling California Baby shampoo at her local health food store, Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Market, which was later acquired by Whole Foods. “For the first eight years, I was the demo girl at the end of the aisle,” she says, persuading moms (successfully) to spend $15.75 on a bottle. “I had one store, and then one store turned into two and three,” she says. “I was just hustling.” Turning Down 'So Many' Offers Thirty years later, Iclisoy can often be found at California Baby's certified-organic farm in Santa Barbara, where she posts dreamy photos on Instagram tramping around in green wellies or racing through a lavender field or picking calendula flowers at sunset, using the tag FARM FRIDAY. (She also shares her weekly workouts under MOVE IT MONDAY). Iclisoy bought the farm in 2011, when the company's previous organic farmer couldn't keep up with demand (and "he wasn't really enthusiastic" about her painstaking process, she says). It took her about five years to find the property, a former vineyard that sits on a rolling hill, about a mile off the highway. "It's beautifully situated," she says. "You've got the ocean to the north … the San Ynez Mountains behind us. There's a wind exchange that comes in. It's a very special part of California." Dried ingredients from the farm head down to the company's "hyper-efficient" production facility in Culver City outside L.A. It's both FDA-certified, as California Baby's sunscreens, eczema lotions and diaper rash creams are considered over-the-counter drugs, and also organic-certified. "Holding those dual certifications is unusual," Iclisoy says, "especially in manufacturing." View this post on Instagram A post shared by California Baby (@californiababy) Throughout the years, Iclisoy says she has received "many, so many" offers for California Baby – but has turned down all of them. I ask her why. "Big industry," she says, doesn't have "any interest in doing things the way I do it." As an example, she points to how she starts her manufacturing process, with a 4-step water purification process that requires heating and pasteurization. "It's a whole-day process," she says. "Most companies don't even filter their water." One big company that offered to buy California Baby told her "we would dumb this down immediately," she recalls. "I get it, they want to be making four batches in one day. I'm making one batch in 24 hours." But she feels she understands her customer – having once been in the market herself for a safe product. The experience with her newborn son's baby shampoo has always stayed with her. "We are the only brand out there for people who have allergies, immunocompromised, a whole host of issues. We actually test for it," she says. "It's not just marketing." Looking ahead, she hopes California Baby – whose competitors over the years have included Babyganics (now owned by SC Johnson), Honest Co. and Tubby Todd – might one day get into home products. As the name suggests, the company has always focused on lotions, creams and other products for babies (both human and furry). "I've been working on a laundry detergent for a really long time," she says, but "when we start looking at the ingredients, there's always an ingredient in there that we can't use." Her research and development time can be 10 or 20 years. "That's really the right way to do it," she says. Iclisoy enjoys doing things differently than competitors, certainly the big corporate kind. "When I first started California Baby, the rest of the industry looked at me like, 'What the heck is she doing? She's kooky,'" she recalls. But one of her "superpowers," she believes, is "barreling down my own lane." In this case, that lane is lined with calendula and eucalyptus and witch hazel. "I created my own path," she says. ◼️

Organic Living

How a ‘Kooky’ California Mom Took on the Baby-Care Industry

The Story Exchange

Organic Living

How a ‘Kooky’ California Mom Took on the Baby-Care Industry

The Story Exchange

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