Interview With Sharonn Itliong of Crater Lake Company

With a founder and owner like Sharonn, it’s no wonder that the bath and body Crater Lake Company is so successful. Customers write with heapings of praise for the each of the products available. Things like body cleansing Cream and Sugar Scrub and softening Moisture Whip Light Conditioner are a sampling of five star indulgences found all over the website.

The amazing thing about Sharonn is the evident dedication and love that she pours, sometimes literally, into everything about Crater Lake. You can see it in the long, long list of fragrances which each get their own lovingly detailed description. With an inventory of about fifty original scents that you’ll have to see to believe, you can almost smell each fragrance as you read the page! A few favorite creations are the innovative concoctions like Jeweled Citrus Drops, Cocoberry Passion, Spiced Cranberry Peach Pie and Honeydew You Like Coladas? Better yet, there are new flavors being added all the time, like the Limited Edition Halloween Scents such as The Grudge Brownies and, my personal favorite, Halo-Halo Ween. So you see, boredom doesn’t even exist in this beauty universe.

Recently, I’ve had the chance to talk back and forth with Sharonn, and besides being one of the sweetest and funniest people to communicate with in the online community, you really get the sense of her devotion to making people happy. Her passion simply shines.

Here’s a Q & A interview about her and her creations to get to learn a bit more:

Have you always had an interest in this field?

Yep. Always. For as long as I can remember.

Crater Lake Company is an interesting name for a beauty business - where does the name come from?

It came from my significant other. I was making votives one day and was about to do my second pour. He walked by, looked over my shoulder and said, “Hey it looks like Crater Lake,” and the name stuck. Years later when I decided to launch this business, I immediately recalled his comment.

How did you get into creating bath and beauty products for a living?

I don’t know. You know, it’s just always been an area of interest for me so there never really was a defining point in my life when I realized I liked this field. I’ve always been surrounded by bath & beauty products from an early age. My mother used to work for Clairol so she would always bring home all these wonderful smelling lotions and potions. We used to bathe my dog in her shampoos!!! That was fun and he was the most handsome and fragrant dog in his pack!

Also, I grew up in Zambia and I remember my housekeeper and I used to go the market, buy a pound or two of shea butter, some sunflower oil and other stuff I don’t remember. I would watch her carefully melt the shea butter over her outdoor charcoal stove and then whip it with her wooden spoon till it was nice and fluffy. No double boilers, mixers, blenders, nothing. Just good old fashioned elbow grease (pun intended.) That was my very first introduction on how to make a body butter I guess huh?

I’m a big fan of yummy beauty products – why do you think sweet food related names and products appeal to so many women?

Because we’re constantly fighting the urge not to eat that (extra) cookie, slice of cake, piece of candy, bar of chocolate. In a way I think that we tend to substitute real sweet treats for those that we can spritz, spray, slather and lather onto our bodies. It’s another form of indulging our senses. Since the sense of smell and taste are so closely linked, I think we have a tendency to seek out scents that satisfy what our sense of taste may be craving.

Besides that, it’s just fun, guilt-free indulgence! Today for example, I am wearing Sugary Rush and I smell like a decadently iced cupcake!

How many scents do you have? How did you come up with so many and the names for them all?

I’ve lost count. The list you see on our site is a small percentage of the number we carry. We’re constantly rotating scents, introducing and discontinuing some, so it’s hard to keep track.

To say that I’m obsessive is really putting it mildly. Thinking about new scents and products is all I do! I think about it while I’m driving, running, filling orders, cooking…you get the idea. I think fragrances and products all.the.time. I have a notebook and pen on my nightstand in case something comes to me when I’m sleeping. I’ve been known to call someone, dictate some cryptic scent recipe and have them e-mail it to me – all because I’m driving and I can’t write the idea down right away. Like Frank Perdue who has a “healthy obsession with chicken,” mine’s with bath and body products and fragrances. Besides, I’m vegetarian and I really don’t like to think about chickens much.

Has there ever been a scent you created that you just said, “No, this is terrible!” and nixed the product?

No never. I’m kidding! Absolutely! To be honest, there’s probably more doozies than successes and there’s a corner in our studio that’s called the CLC Creations Graveyard. Which is why I rely heavily and am forever grateful for my Test Smarties (my panel of consumer testers.)

Case in point, I created a scent called The Gilded Lily. I mixed it, modified it, let it sit, mixed again, modified again and then questioned my ability as to why I even got into this business! To my nose, this fragrance was just terrible. On a whim, I decide to send it to one of my go-to testers. She insisted that it was a great scent and that I should launch it. I did and it became one of our best selling scents in the Spring of ’08. To this day, I get e-mails inquiring about this particular scent and if I’m ever going to bring it back.

As for products, I’ve had disasters too tragic, comical and many to mention! The cream base for our Cream & Sugar scrub took a lot of trial and error. It was inspired by Origins’ Incredible Spreadable Scrub. I wanted to create my own version that was less greasy, but still moisturizing and with gentler exfoliation.

Our best-selling Triple Action Body Buffer went through 7 iterations before I finally got the recipe just right. This product is our best-selling scrub and has a very loyal following.

Where do you get your inspiration for bath and beauty products from?

Anywhere really. Creating fragrances triggered by something that happened in my life makes the experience more rich and memorable. I’m also inspired by far-away memories so I create a fragrance to pay homage to that experience. For example, the fragrance Rain Petals recalls the time when I got caught in the rain.

Where do you see yourself and this business in five years?

I’ve always been a staunch advocate of animal rights and I’d like to raise our level of commitment to this cause. I’d like CLC to operate on a larger scale, with a solid base of international and domestic customers so that we can use the proceeds of this passion to fund my other one. To me this is a win-win situation and my ultimate goal. I’d like to accomplish this within the next 5 years or less.

Domestically, I’d like to continue giving to charities that champion animal rights and stop the cruelty and abuse against them (a million curses on you Michael Vick.) Overseas, specifically the Philippines, I’d like to take some of CLC’s profits and donate to causes that educate people about spaying and neutering their pets and that there is beauty beyond breed. The Philippines has ways to go in this area and I’d like to contribute to this effort in any way I can so that we can finally gain some traction and momentum. I’d also like to use some of CLC’s profits to pay for the spaying and neutering of pets in the Philippines.

I’d like to continue doing what I love to do at CLC - being the company’s creative director. Although right now, because we’re so small, I’m also the Assistant Mail Room Manager, Accounts Payable and Receivables Department, Operations and Big Cheese of Order Fulfillment.

What is your favorite product that you created? Anything you can’t live without for a day?

If you’re asking me to choose 1, I’m afraid I can’t. I love them all. However, in my shower stall right now I have a jar of Triple Action Body Buffer in Banana Buttercream Waffles and a jar of Bath Cloud™ in O Christmas Tea. On my sink counter is my staple jar of Comforting Crème.

For more information, or to get a special treat for yourself, please visit Crater Lake Company’s website here.