The Hexagon

Most of us do some of our shopping at a big box store or the online equivalent: Target, Amazon, Wegmans, and the like.  Have you noticed a trend, though? Amazon Basics, Target's up&up brand, and the Wegmans brand are starting to fill their physical and virtual shelves. These and other enormous retailers can analyze the data and see what is trending, imitate it, and roll it out under their own labels.They can even tell if a particular ingredient is trending and use it in a line. With their supply chain dominance, they can get the ingredients and packaging at lower...

We're moving from biodegradable shrink to glassine bags for our haircare bars and samples. Look for the shift!

I'm running some experimental hives and monitoring in the beeyard ths year.

Cocoa Butter I'm glad I'm not in the artisan chocolate business. West African countries produce 70-80% of the world's cocoa supply, and they have had 3 years of drought, creating poor harvests. Not surprisingly, prices have gone up and "out of stock" often appears on the sites where I buy oils. When I did find some in stock, it cost me half again as much as it usually does. Ouch. We here at Avital's use cocoa butter in so many things: our body butter, haircare, lip balm, lotion bars, foot cream, and soaps. Cocoa butter is great for giving body...