Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Bolander.
Hi Karen, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My skin had a complaint, and commercial soap was the culprit. The drying, the itching, the ingredients I couldn’t pronounce and none of it sat right with me, especially as a pharmacist who knew better. Then I picked up a bar of handmade soap at a local festival, and my skin finally exhaled.
That one bar sent me down a rabbit hole. I started researching the healing properties of the oils used in cold-process soapmaking and realized I had both the chemistry background and the curiosity to formulate something truly therapeutic. So I did. My first batches were purely personal, made for my own skin. But my then-boyfriend Tim built me wooden molds so I could scale up production, and I figured I had nothing to lose by taking a few bars to the farmers’ market.
I sold out on day one.
That was the moment Me&T was born. The name is a nod to the partnership at its core: me, and Tim, who is now my husband and still my biggest supporter. What started as three soap varieties grew into a full line of handcrafted bath and body products, each one formulated with the same pharmacist’s eye for ingredients and efficacy. Today, Me&T Handmade Bath, Body and Home keeps a curated, intentional product line: sustainable, cruelty-free, vegan, and genuinely effective. No filler ingredients, no empty claims. Just products I’d put on my own skin, because that’s exactly how this whole thing started.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth? Not exactly. But my struggles were probably familiar to anyone who has ever run a small production business.
Early on, I wanted to make everything. If a customer at the market asked whether I carried a particular product, my instinct was to add it to the lineup. I also offered far too many fragrances, which sounds like abundance but is actually a trap. Too many choices and customers freeze, smell nothing twice, and walk away empty-handed.
But my biggest struggle was one I never saw coming: my table.
I am not a designer. I am not naturally creative in a visual sense. So I did what made perfect logical sense to me and absolutely no sense to a customer browsing a busy market. I arranged everything alphabetically. All the lotions together, A to Z. All the soaps together, A to Z. No seasonal groupings, no storytelling, no moment of “oh, this belongs with that.” It looked less like an artisan’s table and more like a well-organized stockroom.
A customer looking for something floral had to read every label. A customer drawn in by autumn scents found nothing curated to match that feeling. I was organizing for myself, not for the person standing across the table from me.
It took time, and some humbling market days, to learn how to think like a shopper. Now I design my displays to do the selling for me, drawing people into the space without a single word, because nothing kills a browsing moment faster than someone cornering you in the aisle to ask if you want to come look.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work is rooted in something most handcrafted soap and body care makers don’t bring to the table: 28 years as a licensed pharmacist.
That background changes everything about how I approach formulation. I can read an ingredient list and know what it actually does, not what the marketing says it does. I can separate the science from the trend, the effective from the theatrical. When a new ingredient gets buzzworthy, I’m not reaching for it because it’s popular. I’m asking whether the research supports the claim, whether the concentration matters, and whether it belongs in the product at all.
My specialty is formulation, and what I’m most proud of is that nothing in my line exists because I copied someone else’s recipe or chased a fad. Every product started with a skin need, a chemistry question, or both. That’s the pharmacist in me: identify the problem, understand the mechanism, build the solution.
What sets Me&T apart from many other makers is that distinction between crafting and formulating. Plenty of talented people make beautiful soap. Fewer are asking why a particular oil at a particular percentage does what it does for a particular skin type, and then building from that answer. I am always asking that question.
That’s what I’m most proud of, and it’s the thing I hope customers feel the moment they try something from Me&T for the first time.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
I did try networking groups over the years, and they consistently let me down. The model always seemed to be the same: recommend someone in your group, whether you’ve actually used their services or not. That never sat right with me. I can’t in good conscience send a customer or colleague to someone whose work I haven’t experienced firsthand, and the few times I did hire from within a networking group I walked away disappointed. Referrals without real accountability aren’t referrals. They’re favors, and favors don’t build trust.
I did find mentors through the HSCG (Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetics Guild) nad found their conferences to be very useful
Pricing:
- Bar soap 7.50
- Shampoo Bars 12.99
- Wickless Candles from 5.99
- Sugar Scrubs from 6.99
- Muscle Rub from 9.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meandtsoap.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meandtsoap/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/meandts
