In the News
A Hero for Those High and Dry
Good news, EcoLani fans: Your 4-month drought is finally over. On Monday, Lani received 10,000 bottles of her REVIVE Face & Body Lotion, and they’ll be on the shelves early next week. Lani is Dr. Lani Simpson, D.C., who has been selling her own line of skin lotions out of her home in Berkeley since 2000. (The name “EcoLani” was suggested by her son, Sam, who was 9 years old at the time.) The line includes sunscreens, massage oils and an astringent gel. But the heart of the regimen is the greaseless REVIVE Lotion (formerly, Rejuvenating Lotion) which has been unavailable since January.
The following article appeared in May 2006 on the front page of the Berkeley Voice, Contra Costa Times and the Montclarion newspapers.
Berkeley’s Lani Simpson has a new stock of her highly sought-after, organic lotions
PDF version available for download by clicking here.
Good news, EcoLani fans: Your 4-month drought is finally over. On Monday, Lani received 10,000 bottles of her REVIVE Face & Body Lotion, and they’ll be on the shelves early next week.
Lani is Lani Simpson, who has been selling her own line of skin lotions out of her home in Berkeley since 2000. (The name “EcoLani” was suggested by her son, Sam, who was 9 years old at the time.) The line includes sunscreens, massage oils and an astringent gel. But the heart of the regimen is the greaseless REVIVE Lotion (formerly, Rejuvenating Lotion) which has been unavailable since January.
Since then, the customers have been quietly going bonkers.
“I’m an addict,” said Sarah McKinney, a yoga instructor in Richmond. “I only have this teeny little bottle left. I’m milking it out as long as possible, trying to make it last until the next shipment comes in.”
Mary Tall of San Anselmo was so desperate, she found Simpson’s address on her web site and showed up on her doorstep with an empty bottle, begging for just enough to tide her over.
“My skin is starting to look like a snake’s!” she wailed.
At the time Simpson still had a couple of gallons left, so she was able to accommodate Tall. But two months ago she ran out completely, so she couldn’t help other frantic customers who knocked on her front door.
“I feel really bad about it, but I needed a few months to tweak the formula,” she explained. “This is the third and final version. I finally have a blend I’m happy with.”
What makes the stuff so popular?
“I recommend it to my patients for two reasons,” said Albany chiropractor Linda Berry. “First, it has nothing but high-quality, organic ingredients. You could eat it if you wanted. But just as important is what’s not in it lots of chemicals that you find even in many products that call themselves ‘organic’.”
Simpson, 56, didn’t start out to be the lotion lady. A chiropractor by profession, she finds herself practicing less and less as the lotions take over more and more of her life.
“If anyone had asked me, there was no way I would ever have guessed this is what I’d be doing,” she said. “It was my own health issues that drove me.”
Prominent among those issues is skin cancer, which she has successfully battled three times. In 2000 she read an article about studies in Switzerland that found many sunscreen products contain chemicals that are carcinogenic when absorbed through the skin.
“So I contacted the people who were doing the research and learned all I could from them. Then I found a lab owner in Florida who is completely on the same page with me. He produces the stuff and sends it to me.”
Her sunscreen formula is the same as the REVIVE Face and Body Lotion, with the addition of titanium and green coffee.
Heather Barry, head of the vitamin department [at Berkeley Natural Foods], says customers have been coming in almost daily, asking when the REVIVE Lotion will be back on the shelf.
Starting six years ago with one part time assistant and a handful of customers, she now has three fulltime employees and sales approaching 100,000 bottles a year.
She also has a thriving mail-order business, shipping lotion to customers all over the United States, as well as Mexico and Australia.
This summer she will publish her first book, “The Sun Companion.”
“We’re living in a climate of fear about the Sun, but we also have much to fear from what we’re putting into sunscreens,” she said. “When my son was nine, I would go to his school, and at 9 o’clock in the morning you could smell sunscreen everywhere because dutiful mothers were protecting their children or so they thought.”
