Biz Buzz: She started making oils and salves during COVID and now owns a thriving business

Ruby Hall makes her own line of salves, oils, masks and other all-natural health and beauty products. | Courtesy Ruby Hall

Do you want to know what’s happening in the eastern Idaho business scene? We’ve got you covered. Here is a rundown of this week’s business news across the valley.

BIZ BUZZ

IDAHO FALLS

Idaho Falls woman on a mission to empower women with her line of health and beauty products

Ruby Hall’s lip and cuticle salve. | Ruby Hall

IDAHO FALLS – If there’s one thing Ruby Hall has learned over the last 18 months, it’s that you can turn a bad situation into something positive.

Like many others in eastern Idaho, Hall’s employment became a casualty of the pandemic. But rather than getting depressed, she used the additional downtime to work on something she’s always wanted to do. For her, that meant creating a product she was passionate about.

“I started making some salves for wound care or joint and muscle pain, and then I made my own balm (a combination of butters, oils and waxes used in skincare) and cuticle (a moisturizing product for nails and the layer of skin along the bottom of fingers and toes),” the Idaho Falls native tells EastIdahoNews.com.

Joint and muscle pain is an issue that Hall deals with herself. Providing something to work in conjunction with medication was part of her motivation for this project as well.

Over time, she developed her own recipes for various botanical and skincare items and started giving them to friends and family. They quickly became a hit, and that led to the creation of a business earlier this year.

Sat Nam Salves & Oils officially launched last summer.

Her products are available through Facebook and Instagram. She sells many of them at Mystic Misfits at 3035 East 17th Street in Ammon and The Handmade Idaho Shop at 430 Park Avenue in downtown Idaho Falls.

Hall says it’s been rewarding to see her idea become a successful business venture, and she’s grateful for the response from customers.

“It’s really cool to be on this journey,” says Hall. “I’m just really surprised. As women, we put ourselves on the backburner. It’s so easy for us to take care of our kids, our families, neighbors and friends … but sometimes we live so much for other people that we put ourselves last.”

Since launching the business, Hall says she’s gotten a lot of feedback for new products, and she’s expecting her inventory to continue to evolve. She’s hoping to make her products available in other shops, and she’d eventually like to have her own storefront.

But for now, she’s happy to be living her dream as an entrepreneur and is pleased she’s created a product that customers enjoy.

“It just feels good to make a product and to know that somebody really likes it and helps them feel good about themselves,” she says. “All my products are natural. I try to keep it that way because a lot of times, the things we buy in stores — we don’t know what’s in them.”

Hall says the name of her business comes from a powerful mantra of Kundalini yoga. “Sat Nam” is Sanskrit for “Truth is my name.”

“My vision is to help women find their inner truth and their beauty and to love ourselves. Too often, we get lost in all the noise and voices, and sometimes we need to just be still and trust the journey,” Hall says.

BIZ BITS

Local woman brings a taste of the tropics to eastern Idaho

INKOM – Hall isn’t the only who made the best of the pandemic. Before COVID hit last year, Keiko Dye of Inkom was in Hawaii with her girlfriends and sampled a native treat called an acai bowl. It’s a smoothie served in a bowl that includes acai berries — a tropical fruit — pineapple, bananas, milk, yogurt. Though it’s a dessert, acai is considered a superfood because of its nutritional benefits, according to thesuburbansoapbox.com. Dye fell in love with the treat and wanted to bring it to eastern Idaho. She came up with her own version called the Brio Bowl by Keiko, which she sold at the Idaho Falls Farmer’s Market this summer. It’s available at The Cookie Place as well. EastIdahoNews.com will have a more in-depth story soon.