Read article : Treasure Valley couple takes a shot at made in U.S.A. business | Idaho Press-Tribune Local News
BOISE — As Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” floats through the speakers of Balmshot’s modest Boise office space, Kevin Ruesch maintains a steady pace.
Click-click. Click-click.
One of just a handful of employees at the small business that now produces 3,000 tubes of lip balm per day, Ruesch attaches Big 5 Sporting Goods price tags with his handheld tag gun.
The asking price? $3.99.
Click-click. Click-click.
But Balmshot founder Wayne S. Forrey, 64, didn’t start out charging money for his creation. In fact, as a longtime city planner and consultant, he didn’t intend to become a small business owner at all.
Then he was diagnosed with cancer, and the trajectory of his life would find a new target.
GETTING BALMSHOT OFF THE GROUND
In 1983, Wayne was diagnosed with lip cancer due to sun exposure. After lip reconstruction, where surgeons at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise replaced his lip with tissue from his cheeks, the lifelong Idahoan began using lip balm every day. Because Wayne no longer had moisture glands in his bottom lip and as a red-headed avid outdoorsman, he still needed to protect his skin.
Wayne, who nearly always sports a straw hat and wears Levi’s every day, became frustrated with the mess a traditional lip balm tube would leave seeping into the pocket of his jeans.
Years passed. Then he got an idea.
While working in his garage one Saturday in the fall of 2010, he experimented with a new type of balm dispenser — a single 20-gauge shotgun shell — with a tighter-fitting cap and smooth turning base that wouldn’t get caught on fabric.
At first, Wayne made the lip balm for himself.
Then he started giving it away to family and friends. More and more of his garage was dedicated to making lip balm from an ever-increasing number of shotgun shells.
It took the love of his life, his wife of 42 years, Karen, to encourage him — and let him take the startup costs out of their life savings — to see that Balmshot could be successful commercially.
By the beginning of 2011, the Forreys were selling their product for the first time.
“The next thing I knew, we were meeting with our banker,” Wayne said. “U.S. Bank bent over backward in knots 100 times to help us with this. It was so great to walk out of the bank and say, ‘This thing can happen. We really can do this.’”
PRODUCTION TAKES OFF
The Forreys started small.
“We did research, and we found two labs: one in Utah, one in Denver,” Wayne said. “There is no FDA-approved laboratory for sunscreen in Idaho. We really wanted sunscreen in the balm because of my lip cancer. Karen sat down with the chemist there, and Karen came up with a formula. The FDA approved it, and that’s how it started.”
Each element of the lip balm is made in the United States.
They soon found out the state of California had the strictest set of standards to be able to use the official Made in USA symbol on products.
“That was a decision we made early on,” Karen said.
It’s a decision the couple takes seriously, down to the screw in the shotgun shell.
“The screw could be made in the U.S.A.” Wayne said, “But it might come from foreign steel. The state of California requires even the materials to be from the U.S. Everything in our product is from the U.S. It’s U.S.A. steel, it’s U.S.A. plastic (packaging), it’s U.S.A. oil going into the plastic.”
They worked out of their home’s garage for about a year-and-a-half with two flavors of lip balm: classic and cool mint.
In the early days, they mostly sold the product to retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond.
“When he needed a bigger compressor, I said, ‘You need to move out of the garage,’ because it has quite a noise element,” Karen said.
Now they sell to distributors and stores large and small — from regional stores such as D&B Supply to online commerce giant Amazon. Everything is manufactured and produced from their office space at 7646 W. Lemhi St. in Boise.
Wayne has built several of his own manufacturing machines by hand — including one dubbed Octavia for the eight stages it completes in the assembly process.
The Forreys have sold Balmshot in all 50 states and Canada, and they are working to secure the documentation and patents to sell their product as far away as the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Their line of lip balm has grown to five varieties, including a new organic pomegranate flavor, as well as a mint breath spray.
Karen has other ideas for other organic flavors, and the couple said they intend to explore new product lines for insect repellent and deodorant — all in the shotgun shell packaging.
A HIGHER PURPOSE
Karen, who raised the Forreys’ four children as a stay-at-home mom, went back to school and graduated with a nursing degree from Boise State University at age 40.
The type of care Karen wanted to provide was always clear in her mind, she said.
Karen’s mom died three weeks after she was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. Her sister is a 16-year survivor of the disease, and her aunt has also faced a breast cancer diagnosis of her own.
“I wanted to focus my practice on helping women through breast cancer and increase the understanding that women can be cured when diagnosed early,” she said.
Now a longtime nurse at St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute, she knew Balmshot could make a difference.
Proceeds from the sale of every Pure Pink and Pink Camo Balmshot product are donated quarterly to the institute to help uninsured women pay for mammograms and breast cancer screenings.
The Forreys became a sponsor of the Snake River Stampede’s Pink on the Dirt event this year and have donated $16,000 to the institute so far.
The donations are one aspect of their business they’re most proud of. It’s one of the things they’d encourage anyone with a dream to start their own business to go after.
“Just let your creativity carry you forward, whatever it is — art, science, technology, manufacturing,” Wayne said. “Do it.”
