Oprah Winfrey may not know about burgers from Frisko Freeze or soup from Infinite Soups, but she is indeed aware of bath bombs from Tacoma’s Feeling Smitten Bath Bakery.
In fact, they are among her Favorite Things, as announced in the December issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, and as seen recently on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Their bath bombs, for the uninitiated, are colorful cupcake-shaped (or lollipop-shaped, ice cream cone-shaped) bundles of scrub- substance and bubble bath.
Since the Oprah announcement, business at Feeling Smitten has exploded.
“We’re hiring a night crew for production and shipping,” said owner and founder Courtney Stephens on Friday.
Where the Sixth Avenue business until recently employed three full-time and three part-time employees, Stephens now counts eight and five employees, respectively.
Sales have increased three times over last year’s. Retail orders are being placed from all over the country. Where wholesale trade once accounted for 95 percent of the business, she said, retail sales now equal wholesale transactions.
“I’m excited,” she said. “It doesn’t hit you right away.”
Stephens began producing the bath bombs at home in 2007, first selling online and then through sales representatives. She opened the retail store, which includes an expanded production facility, last March.
She and her husband, Ian, otherwise a writer who helps in the store, welcomed a son, Eliot, last month.
So they have been busy.
“FedEx has to come twice a day now,” Ian Stephens said.
“It’s fun to say that we’re in Oprah this month,” Courtney Stephens said.
Said Oprah, detailing her Christmas list of favorites: “I love these calorie-free cupcake bath bombs, which come in scents like Mellow Mimosa and Mint Condition and fizz with essential oils and Dead Sea salt when you drop them in the tub.”
The media mogul’s creative director first encountered the Tacoma product while at a New York trade show in August, Ian Stephens said.
A few weeks later came the call: “We’d like to feature your product.”
Neither Courtney nor Ian Stephens knew what that actually meant.
This is how success sometimes comes, not with a whimper but with a bang.
“It’s overwhelming,” Courtney Stephens said. “But it’s good.”
For more information, visit www.feelingsmitten.com.
C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535 c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com
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