Hey Everyone,
As we are working to create our web site and tell the world about our wonderful Willy Oil products, our friends keep telling us that we need to add our story about the birth of Willy Oil. So here it is.
Over Valentine’s Day weekend we booked an Airbnb in Boulder, Colorado. At the foot of the Rocky Mountains with fresh snow covering the ground, the Airbnb was located off the highway, on an old farm with a silo, a garden, a little cozy cabin and a big hot tub.
The first night we had our wine and went outside to enjoy the hot tub under the stars. Perfect Colorado beautiful clear sky, snow on the ground, the smell of aspen, fir and pine strong in frosty air - it was a perfect and very romantic setting.
When removing the hot tub cover – Bam! Wow! - the smell of chlorine and chemicals was really, really strong. The owners must have recently shocked the tub, or it had been covered for some time. But that didn’t stop us! We dove in and enjoyed an evening in the bubbling hot water, mist rising and corks popping, under the stars.
The next day we went hiking through Estes Park. Had lunch and toured the Avery brewery. We enjoyed downtown Boulder and looked forward to another night in the tub. We certainly enjoyed the hot tub this second night as well!
To back up the story a little bit, James had spent about six months growing and grooming his beard. Over this time, he had tried a lot of different beard oils, balms, washes and grooming products. He had started working on a personal blend that would provide the benefits and scents he preferred. Needless to say, there were a lot of oil combinations and plethora of essential oils and oil blends all around the house.
Back to our story and back home in Texas after the romantic Valentines weekend, we both started getting extremely dry, red, rashy skin – a chlorine rash! Uncomfortable and crusty. Maybe not so romantic!
The beard oil blend James had started formulating worked so well for his hair and complexion that we used the oil to moisturize and soothe our dry, crusty chlorine rashed skin. Within a few days the skin damaged by the chlorine peeled away revealing clear healthy skin underneath. This oil blend worked so well that we believed we could make a product from this and the Willy Oil Company was born.
Some of the beard oils we tried were too oily and slick. Some had manufactured ingredients with chemical names that looked more appropriate for an industrial cleaner than something to put on your face. It took a lot of trial and error to come up with the perfect base oil blend – a blend that goes on dry, easily and quickly absorbed into hair and skin, that is clean and non-staining, with natural, healthy ingredients.
Also, a lot of the beard oil products that I've tried in the past had either no pleasant scent or a scent so faint as to be barely discernible. The reason is that essential oils, the oils that carry the scent and a lot of the medicinal qualities, are expensive. Even when advertised on the label, these oils may only make up 1% of the products’ ingredients. We pride ourselves at Willy Oil to provide a product that is robustly scented. We formulate our beard oil blends to contain up to 5% essential oils, in a variety of scents we believe are both masculine and fresh.
Thank you for your interest in our products, visiting our site and reading our story.
Cheers,
James and Barbara Willborn