Handmade Natural Beauty Boutique opens second location
Jan. 28—ROCHESTER — Handmade Natural Beauty Boutique opened in downtown Rochester in December after seeing success at its long-standing first location in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Angie Neyens has always been a crafter and a creator. She loves hands-on projects and making new things, which is why she has been making soap for more than two decades.
It started 22 years ago when her mother wanted someone to split a booth at a craft show and Neyens agreed. Her cousin had given them some glycerin soaps that she had made and Neyens wanted to try it and fell in love.
She opened her first store, Handmade Natural Beauty Boutique in La Crosse over a decade ago. Most of the products in her store are made in the shop in La Crosse. Since beginning, she has expanded her products from soap to moisturizer, bath bombs, nail polish and more.
"I've been in three different locations (in La Crosse)," said Neyens. "So I started with a little teeny tiny little hole in the wall on Fifth Avenue and then I moved to a main street shop but I was inside a little plaza and now I'm in that same plaza but I'm on the anchor store around the corner and so I've got street frontage and stuff."
Despite the better location, business never fully recovered after the pandemic and Neyens was ready to expand her business into an area with more foot traffic.
She acquired the Rochester building, located at 110 1st Ave SW, in October but wasn't ready to open until December due to remodeling and finding display furniture. She painted the previously orange walls purple and black and remodeled the furniture herself.
"Part of the reason that I had you know had decided to make my first satellite shop be in Rochester was I was taking my dad here for cancer treatments," said Neyens. "He passed away on Christmas Day, so it was kind of rough."
Neyens closed her shop for two weeks after but is now excited for what the future holds.
There are different scents and a variety of soaps that are only available at the La Crosse location at the moment. She hasn't had the chance to bring every product she wants over to the second location. Since everything is made in La Crosse and some products take weeks to cure, it's easier to have everything there rather than in Rochester at the moment. She hopes to be fully stocked with what she wants soon.
"The goat milk soaps are probably my most popular," said Neyens. "They're great for people with sensitive skin, they're very moisturizing. And then I like to have fun with them."
Neyens has fun creating new designs on bars. She likes to add things like biodegradable glitter, sugar sprinkles and other embellishments.
She also makes a completely vegan soap that uses coconut milk and cream instead of animal byproducts and amino acid silk instead of silk from a worm.
She makes both cold process soaps and hot process soaps. Cold process soap takes longer to cure, anywhere from four to six weeks unlike hot process that can be used immediately.
In addition to the variety of soaps, Neyens is proud of her different lotions. She scents her products with essential oils mostly, but does use some artificial fragrances that don't contain phthalates — which, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a group of chemicals used in hundreds of products, such as vinyl flooring, lubricating oils, and personal-care products (soaps, shampoos, hair sprays).
She has areas in her store devoted to hand care and foot care that include her other brand Sassy Pants Polish. It's a 5-free, meaning it does not use harsh ingredients like toluene, dibutyl phthalate, formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin and camphor that are often found in other polishes.
She has a bath salt bar and a variety of different bath bombs. She also has shower tabs that are like bath bombs but are for the shower. They are infused with various essential oils. She infused different essential oils to make them helpful for different things from stress to sinus congestion.
She also has a friend who has upcycled clothing that is for sale at the location with some luxury robes, fair trade hats, mittens and more.
Business has been slow to start, but Neyens hopes that things pick up when the weather gets nicer. She is currently only open three days — Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays — to balance her time between both locations. She hopes to increase hours in the future. Neyens also hopes to have a grand opening in the spring when the weather improves.
"I would love people to stop in on the hours we're here and I update the website because the hours are kind of changing on a week to week basis," said Neyens. "We're gonna keep trying at the very minimum to do Monday, Tuesdays and Saturdays unless the weather's bad. We'll keep trying to add to that as much as we can."
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Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct name of the business.
