FATCO - Building one of America's Leading Beef Tallow Skin Care Brands.

FATCO – Building one of America’s Leading Beef Tallow Skin Care Brands.

At Fatco, we specialize in making natural & organic personal care products using tallow (aka rendered beef fat) from grass-fed, pasture raised, happy cows! Tallow is extremely nourishing & nutrient dense, and is healing for skin conditions like eczema & psoriasis. We also carry a full line of Cleansing Oils and Deodorants, thus offering products for everyone in your family!

Tallow it is incredibly high in vitamins A, D, K and E, all which are very important for skin health .

Grass fed beef tallow is incredibly healing & nutrient dense, and is soothing for skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, keratosis pilaris, cradle cap, dry skin, etc etc. The list goes on and on! We use only the highest quality animal fats, we currently have one primary source for all of our tallow called Fatworks, out of Colorado. They sources all of their suet fat from 25, US based, family owned farms. We are creating deeply nourishing skin and body care products using a part of the animal that would normally be thrown in the trash. All of the tallow that we use comes from small, US-based family-owned farms who are raising animals responsibly and ethically, and are also regenerating the land in the process.

We have hundreds of moms who have been using our Baby Butta exclusively on their babies since we launched 8 years ago, because they hate the idea of using things like steroid creams on their babies’ sensitive skin! With a consistency a bit more like a balm, this product primarily contains tallow from grass-fed, pasture raised, US based cattle. Tallow is high in vitamins and nutrients that plant-based fats simply do not possess, making it a SuperFood for your Skin!

We primarily focus on manufacturing high-quality products for the skin, body and hair.  A few of our best selling products are our Stank Stop Natural Deodorant (available in both a cream as well as a stick), our Fat Stick (all purpose moisturizing stick) and our Myrrhaculous Face Cream (a heavy cream that you won’t be able to live without in the wintertime!). More recently we’ve added to our assortment more products for body and hair, including our tallow-based Soap Bars and Shampoo + Conditioner Bars.

Founder’s/Owner’s story and what motivated them to start the business – 

How a Paleo Lifestyle Inspired Innovation in the Skin Care Industry.

After doing my first “Whole30” back in 2012, I started to adopt more of a paleo lifestyle, which completely changed my life! I felt better and had a ton more energy! As I started paying more attention to the foods that I was putting into my body, I also started paying a lot more attention to the products that I was using ON my body. I started taking a deeper dive into the products I was using on a daily basis (shampoo, body wash, makeup, etc) and realized that many of these products were full of toxic chemicals and dangerous ingredients. So, I started making many of my own personal care products!

After doing research through the Weston A Price Foundation’s website, I started learning more and more about the benefits using grass-fed beef tallow topically, and started integrating it into the recipes that I was making at home. I was sharing them with friends and family, and people LOVED them! I slowly realized that there really was nothing else like these products on the market, and I realized that this was a brand with Huge potential!

As I became more and more passionate about these products, and less passionate about my full-time job (as a manufacturing engineer), what started out as a hobby quickly morphed into a full-scale business! 

I built my first website on Squarespace and started selling products immediately. The first few years we participated in lots of large tradeshows, trying to get our products in front of major retailers. While many buyers thought our products were interesting and innovative, the trends in the category (ie, “plant based” and “vegan friendly”) steered them away from carrying our line. In 2017 we were approached by Target, who decided to carry our products in about 500 stores! This was HUGE for us! Target ended up carrying our products in their natural beauty aisle from Jan 2018-Jun 2020. 

Nowadays, you can find our products on sites like Thrive Market, Amazon, and (of course) our own website, www.fatco.com. Through the years, we have come to find that our direct sales channel truly is our “bread and butter,” and is therefore where we focus most of our efforts and resources.

The challenges the business/market is facing – 

Why FATCO said “No” to Greenwashing and “Yes” to Natural, Sustainable Products that Promote Skin Health.

The largest challenge that FATCO is facing right now is the same challenge that it’s faced for the last 8 years…and that is the current trend in the skincare category. Right now, skin care products that are “plant-based” and “vegan friendly” are very trendy. These are the types of products that many retail buyers are looking for when sourcing new lines to carry. Since our products are made using animal fats, they are quite the opposite of “vegan friendly”. 

However, there has also emerged a large group of people, like those who follow a ketogenic or carnivore diet, who are firm believers in the use of animal fats! And thankfully we are able to target them through the use of social media!

Another challenge we face is around consumers’ preconceived notions about fats and oils. Society has become so “fat-phobic” and “oil phobic” that we have lost sight of everything else. We have had it ingrained in us since the age of 10 that you must wash your face twice a day, with harsh cleansers or expensive scrubs in order to have beautiful skin. But, if we could just leave our skin alone for 5 minutes, and let it do it’s thing, we would be amazed at how well it can function! The use of fats and oils on your skin allows your skin to re-balance its own natural oil production, and get back to neutral. Fat and Oil are NOT the enemy! And we strive to teach our customers about the benefits of using oils and fats on your skin daily!

Finally, marketing has become much more expensive now than it has ever been in the past. When I started FATCO in 2014, it was very easy to grow on social media. Back then, I was easily able to reach out to influencers on social media and send them product to try out in exchange for them sharing it with their audience. Nowadays, everyone with more than 5 followers is an “influencer” and everyone expects free stuff. On top of that, running ads on platforms like FB/IG and google has become much more expensive than it ever was in the past.  Nowadays, marketing feels so much more complicated!

There are however quite a few opportunities for our brand right now!  Our biggest opportunity right now is around the changing of the “plant-based”  trends! While there may be a subset of the population who believes that “plant based” anything is better, there’s another subset who firmly believes the opposite! They believe in regenerative agriculture, and that plant-based everything is destroying our soil. They believe that cows are not killing the planet, but rather that irresponsible animal husbandry is at fault. They believe that the key to reversing climate change is in healing our soil by the use of animals grazing on pasture, not by planting monoculture crops and eliminating all animals from the food chain.  These are discussions that are being had more and more. And if you would EAT a piece of animal, then why on earth would you be against using something that comes from an animal on your skin???

Another opportunity we face is around the consumer’s desire for truly clean, truly natural skincare products. Consumers are becoming more & more educated about the toxic chemicals found in their personal care products. The organic personal care category is due to be worth 16 Billion dollars by 2020, and a third of all consumers said that natural/organic is an influencing factor in their purchasing decision.  But…the Health and Beauty Industry is struggling to keep up.

The average adult uses about 12 personal care products each day containing 160 unique chemical ingredients. These are chemicals that impact our health. They can affect fertility, they have been linked to cancer, and they can wreak havoc on our hormones. Our skin is our largest organ, and it absorbs  everything that we put on it. As consumers become more aware of greenwashing, and continue to educate themselves around the toxic chemicals to be on the lookout for when purchasing skin care products, big brands are going to be in trouble. With FATCO products, the customer can read and pronounce all of the ingredients that we use, and we are fully transparent about everything that goes into our brand. 

Advice to others about business – 

Cassy’s Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

1) Surround yourself with people who believe in you, and believe in what you are doing. If the people in your life don’t believe in what you’re doing as much as you do, it will eventually become toxic and stifling to your success. 

2) I wish I had asked for more help early on. I learned a lot of things on my own, and it stunted my growth in the beginning. There are TONS of people out there who want to help you and see you be successful…take advantage of that! 

3) when you own your own business, you will work harder and more hours than you ever did at your 9-5 job. But the reward and feeling that comes from working for yourself and creating something amazing is Priceless!

4) There will never be a “perfect” time to start a business. You don’t have to quit your 9-5 in order to start a business…start small, as a side hustle. After owning my own business for 8 years, there is definitely something to be said for the comfort and stability of a weekly paycheck. There’s no glamor in quitting a good paying job just to be broke and stressed all the time…Don’t jump until you know that the parachute will hold you!

Charlotte Cremers
Latest posts by Charlotte Cremers (see all)

MS, University of Tartu
Sleep specialist

Using the acquired academic and professional experience, I advise patients with various complaints about mental health - depressed mood, nervousness, lack of energy and interest, sleep disorders, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts and anxieties, difficulty concentrating, and stress. In my free time, I love to paint and go on long walks on the beach. One of my latest obsessions is sudoku – a wonderful activity to calm an unease mind.

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