NOTHING BITTY ABOUT THIS BALM

Frustrated with the lack of clean and simple beauty products available on the market, Maggie Schmieder took ingredients into her own hands and made Bitty Balm.

“I’M NOT A PROBLEM SOLVER,” Maggie Schmieder says. “I’m a solution ﬁnder.”

Never was a truer statement said by Schmieder of herself—a Jane of All Trades, full-time special education teacher, married mom of two, and a maker of all things.

It was almost two years ago, when out of curiosity, Schmieder ordered the Jones Road Miracle Balms that were trending all over social media and happened to be on sale.

“I liked them. They were that no-makeup makeup that I like,” she says, not being a woman who wears lots of makeup. “But they had a very herbaceous smell and lots of ingredients that weren’t great. I thought I could do better. With my girls being 9- and 11-years-old, I wanted to make something cleaner for them.”

So, with the support of her husband and daughters, Schmieder got to work.

“I read, researched, read some more, and invested. I invested time, money, energy, and passion to create something that I am proud to put my name on and comfortable putting on my daughters’ skin,” she says.

Through trial and error, Schmieder perfected a formula for the product she now calls “Bitty Balm.” Bitty Balm is makeup with nourishing skin care qualities that is lid- and lip-safe—not something all clean beauty products can espouse. Each balm is thoughtfully formulated with 13 natural ingredients that provide color and shine—all while being free of synthetic dyes and harmful chemicals. Now coming in nine colorful shades and a clear option, each balm is handmade, packaged in an acrylic stick, and shipped in a signature orange box by Schmieder.

“The idea is that it just takes a ‘little bit’ to look and feel good with Bitty Balm,” she says. “It was easy to come up with the name, but I feel like there were hundreds of Bitty Balm recipes until I got it right. Sourcing the ingredients was hard because I wanted to make sure they came from ethical places. And then getting the formula so it would set correctly in the packaging took lots of work—I was my own worst critic at what was good enough. You can really make yourself crazy with all of the details.”

As Schmieder was reﬁning her formula, she was also tweaking her business plan. Over the last year, Schmieder redirected her Bitty Balm sales strategy from tweens and teens to women.

“When I started to learn more about marketing, being in business, and the demographic of who was buying this product, I shifted towards selling to women who want less junk in their products and an easy way to get ready. But I love that young girls can steal this product from their mom with no worries. It’s been an evolution for sure. I tell everyone that I ran before I walked with Bitty Balm.”

On the heels of being featured on Good Morning America, WGN Morning News, Sheridan Road, and North Shore Weekend, while also gaining momentum on Instagram @bittybalm, Schmieder’s goal for the year ahead is to have Bitty Balm on shelves in more brick-and-mortar stores.

“It’s so exciting to go into Ross’s [in Highland Park] and see Bitty Balm on the counter at checkout,” she says. “I’m hoping to scale Bitty Balm, but it’s very challenging to ﬁnd a manufacturer that will make Bitty Balm the way I want it to be made.”

While Schmieder isn’t quite ready to relinquish controls to any aspect of Bitty Balm yet, she knows she may have to if the product continues to gain momentum.

“I never wanted to be a beauty brand owner,” she says. “I wanted to ﬁnd a solution to a problem I saw, and I have done that. Seeing Bitty Balm on the shelves of a big box store someday would be a dream come true. Yet having people tell me today that they like Bitty Balm—that they enjoy this thing I’ve made, the art and craft of it all—that means so much to me. It’s very personal. I’m already grateful for this success.”