Our journey With Nature:
Fern & Petal CEO Katie Derrick, started out as a consumer seeking natural, Canadian made products that had quality assurance systems. For those that don’t know, many fragrances are not made authentic. The team explains their reasoning for starting the company and what they’ve accomplished thus far.
Essential oils are often not truly pure; many that are sold in big box stores are actually fragrances (chemicals blended to give a similar smell to the pure form essential oil). The reason that people do this is simply price; mixing chemicals is much cheaper than distilling a field of lavender for its essence.
So after having spent (too much) time searching, Katie decided to take the plunge and start her own company that was truly Canadian, one that you could trust to buy from. Fast forward 3 years and here we are, with over 25,000 customers served in Canada and continuing to grow! We are always humbled by the incredible support we have received from the community and how beloved our products have become in so many households!”
What makes oils essential?
The word ‘essential’ in essential oils actually refers to the essence of the plant itself – but essential oils have really become an (essential) part of our daily lives as well. They have become the foundational ingredient in many of the products we use in our daily lives. They are used as base scents in our soaps, lotions and other skincare items. They are also used as flavouring agents in the food industry and in more ways than you would even realize.
What’s in the process of making essential oils?
We actually produced a video with a B.C. based farmer that tells her story, she grows her own lavender and distills it into essential oils. We try to work with as many small-batch, local farmers as possible. There are a few different distillation methods; the most common one is a Steam distillation (the video we produced also shows this method).
To steam distill an essential oil, it’s actually a very simple process. All you need is: Water, the raw plant material and a distiller. To get started, you fill the bottom of the distiller with water. Then you fill the upper part of the distiller with the plant material you are going to distill.
After that you apply heat to the water to make it boil; as the water boils, the steam rises through the plants and flows into the collection tank. As the steam collects in the collection tank and returns to water form, the essential oil will actually separate from the water and float on the top. As the water rises, you can extract the oil from the top of the water!
It’s a very simple and clean process that is the root of how we create our natural products!
How did you figure out what chemicals worked well for certain products, (i.e. bug repellent, natural ailments)?
I guess it’s a lot like releasing anything new into the market. It’s been a lot of research, trial and error and testing. When we want to create a special blend, we will research each ingredient as much as possible and bring in a selection of ingredients that we want to individually test.
Once we have narrowed down our selection, we will start to formulate; we’ll often go through hundreds of different formulations as we slowly narrow down the end product that we are trying to achieve.
While purposeful blends can take time to create, anyone can create a new blended scent at home! It might be a little daunting to get started, but over time you’ll learn what scents blend well together and anyone at home can put a few different oils in their diffuser to create their own scents!
Is there a certain requirement one has to have to mix chemicals for your products, (i.e. degree or industry focus, certification)?
When we are hiring, we look for people with an existing education in product formulation and/or aromatherapy. There are a variety of educational directions you can go and becoming an aromatherapist is actually quite common.
It really depends upon what level you are looking to achieve; if you want to mix some essential oils at home, there is no risk of doing so – take a few different single oils (or even start with a blend)! Add a few essential oils to your diffuser and see what scent you like the most!
Who plays a role in Fern & Petal?
We are still a very small, family run business. Our team consists of:
Katie Derrick – CEO & Founder
- Katie is the artisan and formulation expert, she hand crafts all of our products and tests them before they go to market
Corey Wilson – Operations
- Corey handles the day-to-day functions of the business, he manages the website, customer support and marketing.
Dallas Wilson – Head of Sales
- Dallas is our sales lead; he supports our retailers and is working to help us get our products in stores across the country.
People who have supported Fern & Petal: Celine & Bruce Derrick, Vanice & Darrell Wilson, Cindy Derrick, Sarah Kraft, Robyn Stubbs, Shnane & the Team at Vive Social PR, Nate Featherstone & the Team at Rainlight Media.
Fern & Petal Spring 2023: Gearing towards eco-friendly pulp paper and reusable glass jars.
We want to be the leaders in aromatherapy and provide only the highest quality oils from trusted sources. That’s why we are changing the way batch testing is provided on essential oils, making it more available and easy to find, regardless of where you are. All of our new products, including our blends, oils, rollers and kits, have accessible batch codes with a scannable QR code to help you look it up. When scanning and entering the code for a single note oil, you will find the latest batch information, including the: Certificate of Analysis, GCMS and MSDS documents.
With a brand new line of blends, rollers, sprays, bath salts and collections, all created with a perfect blend of 100% pure, all-natural ingredients, eco-friendly packaging and a connectivity to all-things nature. This new look is the embodiment of everything we believe, a line of products that are made from nature, in and out, given to use from nature, herself.
Resources:
https://fernandpetal.ca/blogs/farming-and-culture/our-journey-with-nature
https://www.facebook.com/fernandpetal.ca
https://www.instagram.com/fernandpetal.ca/
Author: Kayla Stephens, Content Writer, Toronto, Canada. If you have any stories or comments, kindly email: – kstephens755@gmail.com
