In my last post I talked about the newspaper reporter asking me about my hopes and dreams. Well, the paper finally published my story in last Sunday's paper. It was perfect timing too; I had been selling at a four day outdoor festival that I have never done before. The weather was terrible; rainy, windy, and cold. Not the kind of weather that makes people want to come outside and do any shopping. As I said, the story came out on Sunday and boy did my business pick up. I made half my money on Sunday alone. While thinking about why this occurred I realized that people just want to make a connection. I could have placed an ad, but I bet it would not have gotten me the same results. I love to think about what makes people tick and as I do more marketing and markets, I have come to realize that people just want to know you, or at least feel like they do. In my case, what you see is what you get. I don't mind people knowing me so I answer questions openly; I tell my story whenever someone wants to know it. I think in the world today people want honesty, and that is one thing that I am good at. So here is my story and I am stickin to it:
PENINSULA WOMAN: Woman creates own brand of goat soap
Cover photo by Chris Tucker / Design by Heather Loyd
By Diane Urbani de la Paz
Peninsula Woman
As a girl growing up in Joyce, Shannon Wiggins had a list of things she vowed to never do.
"I said I was never getting married; I wasn't having any kids. No animals. I wanted to live in the city," she remembers. These days, "my whole family cracks up at me. And I tell my kids: Be careful what you say you'll never do." Wiggins, 43, not only has five children and a barn full of animals now, this March, she had 12 actual kids, as in baby Nubian goats, on her Galloping Goats farm out in the country east of Port Angeles.
She bottle-fed the kids, to socialize them -- and the little ones, like their nannies, became quite friendly.
And though Wiggins has since sold most of the young goats, she still has 11 in the barn her husband, Mike, built for her.
Their farm is where Wiggins learned to make goat's milk soap, in part because all four of her daughters have sensitive skin.
She's built a business in which she markets Galloping Goats soaps -- from rosemary-mint to black licorice to lilac to patchouli-scented "Happy Hippie" -- to a devoted following.
Her acquisition of goats goes back to summer 2001, when Wiggins' daughter, Sarah, then 11, spent the summer with a cousin in Oregon. The family had goats, and Sarah came back home hoping to adopt at least one of her own. "Nooo," was her parents' answer -- until Christmas, when they decided to surprise Sarah with two young ones. Wiggins hid them at a friend's house and threw the girls off the trail by telling them, "We're getting pigs." On Christmas morning, the goats were revealed, Sarah and her mother joined 4-H, and they were off.
Wiggins had long wanted to make goat's milk soap but was apprehensive about working with lye and so spent a year studying the process. She's been making soap for five years now.
"I figured out the formula I like in the first few months. Now I get to play with color and scent," Wiggins said. "I ask the kids: 'What color does this smell like?'
"It's a creative outlet," she said, adding that her offspring provide her with good, fresh input.
Of the Wiggins' children, Steven, 24, Andrea, 22, Sarah, now 20, Libby, 18, and Grace, 15, the four daughters are living at home. Steven is an apprentice electrician in Monroe, while Andrea and Sarah recently returned after time in Canada and California.
"I really enjoy having them back home," Wiggins said. "They're all pretty busy," but the four help her with packaging and other chores.
"We didn't plan to have a big family," she added. "But I'm glad we are."
Wiggins met Mike back in 1994; each had two children from a previous marriage, and, she said, "we both had a lot of baggage."
But after a friend introduced them, and they had their first date at Downrigger's restaurant in Port Angeles, "we were never apart," she said. They had Grace together, and "the [wedding] ceremony was just a formality."
And despite her vow all those years ago to move to an urban place, Wiggins wanted to stay here so their children could know their extended family. Wiggins' father Bill Roden still lives near Port Angeles, as do three of her four sisters, Barb Camper, Dora Wilson and Ramona Cannon, and her brother, Mike Braack.
In addition to being a farmer and entrepreneur -- she doesn't mind the term mompreneur -- Wiggins is a teacher. She home-schooled her girls until this year, when Libby became a Running Start student at Peninsula College and Grace began taking courses at Olympic Peninsula Academy in Sequim.
"Mostly I love it," she said of home schooling, though of course there were some days when it was difficult.
This spring and summer, Wiggins looks forward to Saturday lunches with her daughters at the Sequim Open Aire Market, where she sells her Galloping Goats soaps. The market is one of her best outlets; she also has a website, www.WashingtonSoap.com, and sells her products at the Red Rooster Grocery in downtown Sequim.
This Memorial Day weekend, she's set up at the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts street fair, and reappear July 23-25 for Arts in Action on the Port Angeles waterfront.
Such festivals take a particular kind of patience, said Wiggins. When asked how she copes with the waves of passers-by who look and look but don't buy, Wiggins said only that she hopes she's gracious.
Windy weather can wear a vendor out, though. And then come the people who pause in front of the booth, turn their backs to it and talk to friends, blocking others' view.
"They don't realize," Wiggins said, "that they're basically ruining your business."
But mostly, she added, festivals and farmers' markets are ideal for connecting with people and introducing them to the beauties of goats and milk. "Goats are a misunderstood animal," Wiggins said. "People think they eat everything. But they're really very picky eaters. They like salal brush and blackberries . . . and I think fir needles are their favorite." Wiggins makes goat cheese and goat's milk ice cream for her family, and of course, they all use her goat's milk soap, made with shea butter, coconut and sunflower oil and natural fragrances.
Goat's milk is just plain mild, Wiggins said, and it's rich in vitamins A and D. She doesn't add chemicals, saying she wants to be able to pronounce everything in her soap. "She is such a great business person," said Galloping Goats fan Deborah Kirk. "We love the soap because it is healthy for the body. The skin being the biggest organ -- and we take in so many things through the skin -- to have Shannon's goat soap is awesome."
For guys, Wiggins makes "Stud Bubbles," a masculine-scented soap, as well as "Blarney Stone," inspired by Irish Spring and "Bare Naked," an unscented bar.
Mike, meanwhile, is a paper maker at Nippon Paper Industries in Port Angeles and restores old cars in his off time. The couple likes to go with friends to Reno for the Hot August Nights car show-swap meet-sock hop. And do they bring the kids? "Nooo . . . no responsibilities," Wiggins answered with a smile, adding that the girls, with help from the rest of her family, look after the goats.
Wiggins is a woman who's built a business that suits her perfectly and that gives her the right blend of work and family time. "I just try to enjoy every day as it comes," she said. "It doesn't do that much good to look that far into the future . . . whatever happens, I try to appreciate every day."
