What a year! It seems safe to say 2016 was a doozy for everyone. Today, from the other side, I’m looking toward the year ahead with a fresh perspective and some exciting new things on the horizon.
This business has been a labor of love since its inception. All the while, I’ve been trying to find the ever-elusive balance between keeping that passion alive and growing our business in ways that will ensure success for our team. When I started out, over twenty years ago, I just wanted to put Big Sur and the Sierra Nevada in a bottle. That’s why I started Juniper Ridge and I’m happy to say it’s why I still do it.
To be candid, this year has presented some challenges. The type of challenges that forced us to really focus and prioritize. For me, I focus best when I’m out in the wild, out there deep in the Sierra Nevada and the coastal ranges, out where my head gets clear and I can be a part of something bigger. So, that’s just what I did; I got out there. The Mountains are good for that — reminding us of our place in the scheme of things, what it means to be still, to weather change, to move and shift when necessary, to be facilitators of the long view.
The crew and I spent the last quarter digging into the Mountains, deep into some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. We’ve worked hard to create formulations that most beautifully represent the incredible places from which they come. As we ascend through winter, we’re already looking forward. We’ve entered the Desert quarter, beginning with a hike into the Mojave that dumps us out at the gates of our third annual renegade tradeshow, Desert and Denim.
With my priorities realigned, and with the help of the incredibly dedicated crew of folks at Juniper Ridge, we’re beginning to move in the right direction again. We’ve got some beautiful stuff happening this year.
We’re introducing several new products building on the success of our simplified, more affordable Backcountry line. We’ll continue to offer our complex formulations and our seasonal Field Labs, our opus of wilderness perfume. These products are our babies; art projects that are worth every penny, but may be out of reach for some. We’re broadening our accessibility to be more in line with our core values: bringing the Mountains, the Desert, and the Coast into your home.
In terms of content, be on the lookout for in-depth ingredient features highlighting every plant we use in our products. Being in love is a beautiful thing and man, we are in love with these plants. We want to share every bit of that love with you with the hope it’ll turn you on as much as it does us.
We remain dedicated to making harvest-to-home, plant-based products that deeply exude the places from which they come. We’ve never bought an outside fragrance ingredient and we never will. We’re proud to be the only company in the world making wilderness perfume from scratch. Each aromatic ingredient in every bottle is 100% real and harvested and extracted by us. Our plan for 2017 is to follow that path.