A Love Letter from our Founder
Posted by Amber Ashley on Jul 30th 2025
This month, Inesscents celebrated her 25th birthday.
25 years of growth and transformation.
This has been such a profound journey of really growing up together. I was a brand-new mama, with a brand-new baby, who also turned 25 this month.
In many ways, I feel like we raised each other (me, Inesscents and my son).
I was alone, in the Oregon wild ~ living in a farmhouse on the river at the edge of the vast wilderness. I was isolated. I was hibernating. I was transforming. Making my daily walk down to one of the most perfect swimming holes of the Illinois River, providing my soul sanctuary and time for communion with the life growing inside of me and the vast unknown. Through the changing seasons, every day, I made that walk. In solitude. In connection.
When I was about 7 months pregnant, my dearest friend and sister, who was living in Senegal at the time, sent me $2000 to go to India. A place I had traveled to several times and was my familiar, to go buy as much sandalwood, amber and whatever other precious aromatic oils and wares I could, to give me and my son a place to start building our life together. With the blessing and care of our midwife, I made the journey. Full, pregnant, tender and strong into the summer heat of India, for 2 weeks trusting I would be taken care of. I remember, I could barely pass a shop without the shop keeper offering me tea or a cold drink and to sit and put my feet up. There was always someone next to me willing to carry a bag for me, so I didn’t strain my very pregnant being. I was held.
Coming back to Oregon, I continued blending oils, along with some shea butter my sister had brought back from Senegal. I love to tell people that this was not the pretty, filtered, clean shea butter we offer today. This shea butter had goat hair (sometimes) and rich African Earth in it. It was alive with tradition and wisdom. You could feel the life force in it, and we loved it! You see, already were living a life aligned with organic foods, natural living and prayer, so this was just a deepening our connections with Earth wisdom. Health food stores didn’t have a lot of truly clean body care products yet. Organic skin care was not a thing, Fair Trade in skin care wasn’t a thing yet. Most people hadn’t even heard of shea butter yet. So, we started paving the way, making products aligned with how we live. I started blending. Blending little bottles of aromatic oils. Putting this shea butter in jars. Making labels on our home printer. Hand cutting these labels one by one.
I remember walking into the Ashland Food Coop, soon after my son was born, baby in sling, and showing the buyer what I was creating. She said she would buy whatever I made. This beautiful coop is really, in so many ways, part of our origin story and why I feel so deeply grateful to this store for saying yes and for continuing to carry our products for the last 25 years. Of course, it still fills my heart with gratitude when I think of all the retailers who listened, experienced our products and said yes, even though we had no special branding, no UPC’s, just homemade labels hand cut and applied with love.
When people ask me how I have grown Inesscents, it is such a vast question with so many ways to answer. There have been so many chapters and seasons.
Back in 2000, the internet was not as robust of a sourcing platform as we have today. So much of what we offered and products we added to our selection was based on synchronistic connections with farmers and producers. We were still bringing our shea butter back from West Africa in calabash (massive gourds that could hold up to 50lbs of butter). I had suppliers in India that shipped us our amber resin and sandalwood. I had connected with the only certified organic jojoba farm in Arizona at the time for our jojoba oil. I connected with this sweet family farm in NorCal who grew and cold-pressed organic almonds into oil. This is how we started. One product at a time. One farm at a time. One customer at a time.
Sometimes, even now, when I am in stores talking with buyers or store staff, they ask how I did it. How have I grown Inesscents? The process hasn’t actually changed that much over these 25 years. I am very proud that 100% of our products are still produced in-house. Of course, this is now a warehouse instead of my kitchen and our processes have evolved to become more efficient with the help of filling and labeling machines, etc. Yet still, someone’s caring hands touch every single bottle up to the point we ship our products to our thousands of customers. While many brands may come in with big VC investors, big marketing budgets and big pay to play game, that is not how we did it. We have stood strong in alignment with our core-values of whole, organic skin care – with minimal processing and fully vibrant with the life force of the plants we use. All of this while continuing to be a one-store-at-a-time brand. Sure, some of our national and regional chains have accelerated growth, but our approach has been the same.
I honestly don’t know any other way. Inesscents has been woven into the very fabric of who I am. She has flowed with my dreams and illuminated my shadows. She has been a rock steady soul sister cheerleading me from my inner depths, helping activate my creative channel and supporting me with a good, generous life. She has given me the freedom to pursue my passions, to show up for my family and to be generous with my loved ones.
I remember at one point, in the early days, I felt like I was supposed to have a business plan, a map to the future. My life has not worked that way. She (Inesscents) has somehow gifted me a home and radical acceptance of my wild free creative spirit as well as a place to apply my analytical attention-to-detail mind. Perhaps a gift of never having taken a penny of outside capital. Inesscents has truly built herself step by step, with so many deeply caring hands and spirits along the way helping to support the vision.
As mentioned above, Inesscents started in my home, in my kitchen. Our first employees came to my home and became part of my family. So much of the Inesscents story is about me, Amber, growing up and into myself. Now, 25 years later, my son is grown, living across the country. This beloved home, where it all started, is now for sale, ready to find a new family to dream their dreams in. Inesscents has become a trusted brand in the natural products channel nationwide and I, Amber, am dreaming into who I want to be for this next chapter, in deeper alignment and gratitude for all the interwoven connections that have made this possible.
One of my favorite things about what I do is to connect with all of you. Our customers, our stores, our sales teams and our employees. The joy of witnessing each other grow in our craft and life is like no other. In service always to our core values of tending the Earth and continually giving thanks.
Deep bows of gratitude to Pachamama, for providing this earthly bounty and holding us so strong as we have fallen and as we have grown, to those who came before me and so generously shared their knowledge of how to work with the plants, to my spirit guides and plant allies encouraging my growth and showing me how to be in right relation with them, to Kaya – thanks for being my ride or die from day 1, to my son Jahnoi, for choosing me as your mama, to Sam – Inesscents wouldn’t be what she is today without you, to my soul sister Suji - for always having my back and my heart, to my sister astrological oracle Kristin - for helping me chart the course ahead and remind me it will all be ok, to all the Inesscents employees over the years who crafted with care what feels like gazillions of teeny tiny bottles of pure Inesscents magic, to our sales team for being the best brand ambassadors I could have hoped for, to our store buyers and staff who love us, to our customers who continue to use, enjoy and love us up on the daily. I could add a whole heap of personal names who each brought their own unique spark of magic, but then you would all be reading a list of names for days… If you are one of those people, know that I see you and am so grateful for you.
So much love,
~ Amber
