Scrubba Body’s Year In Review.

It’s been a wild ride ol’ 2021. Full of cliches “It can’t be as bad as last year”, “Such a rollercoaster” and “we’re all in this together” plus a hundred more to that effect. I don’t want to lie and say this was a great year but instead of dwelling on the lows, I wanted to remember and celebrate the highs.

March 2 - Introduced Quiet Time at our Westfield Kotara store. From 10:30am - 11:30am on Tuesdays we dim the lights and turn the music off to create a welcoming and inclusive shopping experience for people living with dementia, autism and sensory sensitivities. The Newcastle Herald even did a little write up on us.

April 14 - We opened up our Charlestown Square pop up store. Which then had to close for a few months due to lockdown. But we did reopen again for Christmas. We’re actually just packing it all up today. It’s been great Charlie, thanks for having us! We’ll see you again before Mother’s Day!

May 10 - We released a new range, our face and body mists! These guys have been such a hit! Especially since mandatory mask wearing became a thing. A quick spritz really makes the world of difference on a sweaty, mask fatigued face.

May - Big changes! We closed our first store we ever opened in Marketown. This was the place where all of our products were made, labeled, stored, and orders were posted from. However we had grown out of there, we needed more space. And the most amazing coincidental opportunity made itself available to us. The warehouse space directly behind our Kotara store opened up for rent and we jumped at it.

August 2 - We released another new range, our XL Candles with 3 wicks and a 240 hour burn time, these candles are such a vibe.

Sept 2 - Scrubba Body went international! We shipped our first order of 2500 lip balms to a Japanese wholesaler. That was a very proud moment here. Global domination initiated.

Sept 29 - Brookie, our first official employee, had her 4 YEAR SCRUBBA-VERSARY! Brookie started working at our market stalls and shopping centre pop ups. Now she is in charge of production, wholesale orders, actually, she does pretty much everything! She’s Josh’s right hand. And sometimes, his left one too.

October 6 - Was the launch of Scrubba daddy Josh and my podcast, Got a Queery? It’s a fun conversation with queer entrepreneurs over a few cocktails, talking about life, business and just general tips on being successful.

October - We took part in The Hunter Breast Cancer Foundation’s campaign to Paint the Town Pink by selling limited edition pink lip balms. With every lip balm sold, a dollar was donated to HBCF. This was a massive success, we sold 3 times more lip balms in October than we normally would in any other month!

November 17 - We launched Hey Hudson, our little brother company. A pet care range that has all of the same values as Scrubba Body. Natural, Cruelty-Free, Vegan and Handmade in Newcastle, Australia. Hey Hudson offers affordable, luxury coat and skincare for your dog; because why should we keep all of the fancy skincare goodies to ourselves?

Since then we have been on the crazy cycle of making products, getting them labeled and onto the shelves, then making more. Christmas came and so did Omicron. But we did our absolute best and no one can say we didn’t work our butts off, especially Josh. That guy was working 18 hour days for about 3 weeks straight. Ahhh, but now we get to relax a little bit. The pop ups have been packed down and our Kotara store is fully stocked.

I guess the most important thing we wanted to say is THANK YOU! Thank you to anyone who purchased anything from us over the last 12 months. There’s that saying that a small business owner does a happy dance when you buy from them, and I can tell you now it’s true. I’m so grateful to be apart of this Scrubba family, and it’s thanks to all of you guys and your support over the year that has kept me and the team employed and kept Josh’s dream alive.

So cheers to 2021! Thanks for coming, but now's your cue to leave.

I’m excited to see what 2022 holds for us… (spoiler, it’s TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION!!)