Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
Lani Lazzari is only 13 years old, but she exudes a confidence usually reserved for entrepreneurs 10 years her senior as she talks about the genesis of her business, Simple Sugars.
She works out of a small room in a back corner of her basement in Fox Chapel. The sign on the door warns her family in handwritten pink letters that something important is going on in there. ‘Lani says, keep out, work in progress,’ it reads. And that work has led to her creating a line of all-natural body, face and foot scrubs that are for sale locally and on the Internet.
In December 2005 when she was 11, Lani’s mother wanted the family to make homemade Christmas presents. So, Lani created a face scrub from simple ingredients in the kitchen, including sugar, vanilla and almond. Since Lani has sensitive skin, she wanted her scrub to be safe for everyone and vowed to always use natural ingredients.
‘Anything that you wouldn’t eat, you shouldn’t put it on your skin because it gets absorbed into your bloodstream,’ she said.
Family and friends raved about the scrub, and the word was out. Lani’s aunt, Beth Nigro, of Aspinwall, switched to Lani’s brand quickly.
‘She was buying $75 sugar scrubs and said she actually liked mine better,’ Lani said with a smile.
The eighth-grader at The Ellis School began to research aromatherapy and discovered what oils were good for the skin. She then experimented with other natural ingredients.
Her customer base grew through word of mouth, and Lani started working with UPMC, which eventually ordered 2,400 peppermint foot scrubs to include in gift bags for the Walk for the Whisper to raise awareness for ovarian cancer.
‘At first, I was a little stressed out about it. How I was I going to get it done?’ she said.
Lani created a production schedule, ordered ingredients and figured out that she would have to make about 200 jars a day over the summer. It was a great lesson on what could be produced out of her basement workroom with the help of her mother, grandmother and aunt.
‘Now we know how many we can do without hiring people or getting automated,’ she said…
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