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Women in Business: Heather Kalisiak's soap-cess

A North Tonawanda women makes and sells her own soap line.

Posted at 5:37 PM, Dec 05, 2018

and last updated 2018-12-05 17:45:34-05

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Heather Kalisiak's busy whipping up some of her signature shaving soap.

She's the mastermind behind Martinsville Soapworks.“I did about six months of research and knocked it out of the park with the first bar,” Kalisiak said.

That was back in 2002. She only opened her storefront here in North Tonawanda about five years ago. She said she comes from a resourceful family. “It's in my DNA. So, I needed something that I couldn't just sell but something I was making,” she explained.

Kalisiak has 16 different varieties of soaps. That's not including her holiday line. She said her most popular scents are Wild Elderberry and Oatmeal. She also sells a men's line, lotions and lip balms.

Nothing is outsourced. She makes all her products and packages them right in the store. She said that's done by design to maintain control of her recipes. “You won’t be able to find it in Target. You're not going to find it in another mega-mart. I'm not going to go nationwide. It's not going to happen.”