Southern California Indie Beauty Businesses Scramble To Save Products Amid Wildfires

Beauty companies headquartered in Southern California, an area dense with indie beauty brands and retailers, are confronting the consequences of ongoing wildfires and preparing their businesses for future natural disasters.

Flames have scorched at least 200,000 acres over 270 square miles across Ventura, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside counties, forcing more than 200,000 people to evacuate and consuming about 800 homes. As firefighters strive to contain the wildfires, beauty brands affected by them have been struggling to keep their operations functional during the crucial holiday shopping period.

Hope Gillerman, founder of Ventura-based H. Gillerman Organics, figures her brand will suffer from a sales dip as a result of the blaze. Shipments of its essential oils products have been slowed, and she’s had to sort through whether merchandise may have been compromised.

The fires caused a power outage at Gillerman’s office, and she moved her brand’s inventory to her house, where she’s constructed a makeshift lab to keep smoke and embers away from the products she’s assembling for customers. Last week, she was unable to ship packages.

“I’m supposed to be doing the biggest promotions of the year right now, posting every day and sending email blasts, and I’m not doing anything,” reports Gillerman. “I wrote to everyone expecting product and explained we’re in Ventura, and that shipments would be coming later in the week, but this is supposed to be my busiest time of year, and I’m definitely going to take a hit.”

Garrett Markenson’s salon Garrett Markenson Coiffure and haircare brand Reverie are based in Santa Clarita about a mile away from the Rye Fire. He believes sales have been dented by the disaster. However, he’s not paying too much attention to revenues at the moment. He’s focusing on the wildfire measures to take should ecological calamites continue to occur.

Markenson had no wildfire emergency plan in place when he was instructed to evacuate his company’s headquarters for a day. He and his wife considered renting a U Haul to relocate products from the headquarters, but, ultimately, decided against it to save time to ready themselves for a potential evacuation of their home. In the end, no product was damaged.

“We definitely got a crash in course in how to handle this in the future,” says Markenson. “In California, everyone has a plan for earthquakes, but no one has a plan for fires, even though these wildfires are not really that new.” He is drawing up a document for staffers to outline exactly what they should do during wildfires.

Red Tail Ranch in Ojai, where the natural fragrance brand Ojai Wild, grows ingredients such as white sage, vetiver, marshmallow root and lemongrass, was evacuated, but not destroyed. “I’m devastated,” says Ojai Wild founder Janna Sheehan. “There is little that can be done, so we wait. If the farm survives, I’m not sure how the plants will fare. There is so much ash and, obviously, the trauma. We’ve harvested all that we need for the next six months prior to now, so the only immediate impact has been an emotional malaise. We can rebuild fairly quickly, so I’m not concerned about production.”

The production at other Southern California brands has been hindered, but they haven’t dealt with evacuations or direct blows to product supply. Ranavat Botanics’ office is two blocks from the edge of the Skirball Fire evacuation zone. If the brand had been told to evacuate, the disruption would have led to problems for a large order it had to fill.

“We use a ton of local artisans, including our foil-stamped boxes out of Burbank, so we almost had a bit of a snag with our product schedule there, but, thankfully, they didn’t stop production either,” says Ranavat Botanics founder Michelle Ranavat.

Kat Rudu, whose skincare business is based in Venice, says her office is not directly in the line of the fires, but they have affected her online sales and the lives of her clients. She sent an email to nearby colleagues to lend support, and offered to send clients product care packages if they’d been evacuated or displaced. “Being a small, independent brand, we are not always able to give or gift in large quantities for promotional purposes, but, in this case, it would be well worth it,” says Rudu.

SkinOwl is located about six freeway exits from the Skirball Fire, and the brand’s shipments and messenger deliveries were delayed. “Our customers have been pretty understanding,” says SkinOwl founder Annie Tevelin. “But the energy here has been low because we can’t go outside because of the air quality, and I can tell everyone is scared, so it’s important to me to keep energy up because it’s all freaking people out.”

As the brand copes with the fallout from the fires, SkinOwl’s sales have been rising. Tevelin says, “Business is up, and it’s just busier by default because of the time of year, but the least of my concern right now is sales, it’s turning the sprinklers on outside the office.”