About
We are a fun bunch of hardworking folks who have been making natural body care since 1991 when I stumbled across a recipe for lip balm. It's a funny story...
... that started when I flunked a math class at Umass, Amherst in 1991. While taking the class over (in order to graduate) I came upon a recipe for lip balm and thought it looked easy enough to make.
Armed with beeswax from my neighbor and supplies from a local health food store, I went to work in my mother's kitchen. At first I gave it away to friends, but soon everyone was encouraging me to sell it in stores. So I did.
By my senior year Mad Gab's was in 10 stores and I was officially in business! Having come up with a logo, displays created from salvaged coffin wood, and finally figuring out some legal and accounting (again with the dreaded math!) issues, I was on my way. Or so I thought.
It turns out I didn't really know what I was doing, so the year of 1996 found me in a business incubator called Gasoline Alley. Here I learned all about accounting, marketing plans, balance sheets, profit and loss statements and what it would take to earn a living selling my lip balm.
I completed my work at Gasoline Alley and headed to Maine with $40 in my pocket and a lot hope. I took on a 200 square foot space in Portland, and over the next 12 years built a great crew of fellow Mad Gabbers, plus a much longer list of products enjoyed the world over. We are now located in a 4500 square foot space in Westbrook's Dana Warp Mill, where we make, ship and sell our wonderful products.
What started out as a solo journey in my mother's kitchen has become an unbelievable collaboration of talents and a wild ride with no end in sight!
Thanks for stopping by,
Gab