Photo / Courtesy Pickle’s Potions and Lotions
Kristin Mutchler
Updated: December 9, 2024
Craft maker of ‘potions and lotions’ expands with second Kennebec County store
Photo / Courtesy Pickle’s Potions and Lotions
Pickle’s Potions and Lotions’s second location in Waterville reflects the company’s growth.
A family-run skincare company that develops its own product lines had a hit on its hands when it opened its first retail store in Winthrop in 2020.
That success led to the lease of a second location in Waterville, which opened with a ribbon-cutting last month.
Pickle’s Potions and Lotions has its flagship store at 130 Main St. in Winthrop. The second store is at 36 Main St. in Waterville.
Don Plourde of Coldwell Banker Plourde Real Estate handled the transaction.
“They were small business of the year last year for the Kennebec Valley Chamber,” Plourde noted.
Founded in 2015 by Kristin Mutchler, Pickle’s Potions and Lotions uses local herbs and beeswax, unrefined oils and botanical extracts. Its best-selling products are Itch Balm and Tick Sprays.
Mutchler has diplomas and certifications in aroma-dermatology, cosmetic science, cosmetic formulation, aroma-psychology, botany and herbalism, along with two years of nursing school.
Mutchler’s husband Gary Hunt is a co-owner who provides web and graphic design, product packaging and labels and handles most of the in-person shows.
Kitchen-turned-lab
Mutchler was born in Colorado and grew up in the Philippines. She worked initially as a nurse, then worked as an elementary school teacher. She and Hunt spent two years teaching in China, then eight years in South Korea.
When they decided to return to the U.S., they were attracted to the idea of being in Maine, where Mutchler has family roots and which the couple enjoyed visiting. Mutchler continue to teach in Maine.
Her entrepreneurial journey started more than 10 years ago. Her newborn daughter suffered from dermatitis and the couple was reluctant to treat it with a steroid cream prescription.
Photo / Courtesy Pickle’s Potions and Lotions
The Winthrop shop opened in 2020.
At the time, there weren’t any natural options on the market, she said. Mutchler researched the benefits of different plants, oils and formulations, going through various iterations that she asked friends and family members to try.
“Now we have a tried-and true-formula,” she said of that first product, called Eczema Elixir and made with medicinal herbs from her gardens.
She continued her studies and took classes in fields like herbalism and aromatherapy. Subsequent formulations included a product to treat arthritis pain and facial care products.
The family’s house has two kitchens, so Mutchler claimed the second one for her research lab. Her husband provides graphic design and came up with a logo. The two started an Etsy store. Mutchler was making maybe six or a dozen or each product.
Photo / Courtesy Pickle’s Potions and Lotions
The start of a formulation.
A friend encouraged her to bring her products to a holiday fair where vendors could set up tables. Hesitant at first, she decided to try it.
The result? Her products sold out.
Creating relationships
Mutchler was still teaching throughout the start of the enterprise.
“This was a side hustle,” she said.
Online sales were going well.
“But the best thing we did was attend different events, like makers markets and farmers markets, to talk with people, connect with customers and create relationships,” she said. “That was what made us grow the most. People would come back and then send their friends.”
Mutchler quit teaching in 2019 to focus on the business. In 2020, when the world was closing down, the couple found a little storefront of about 700 square feet in Winthrop.
Photo / Courtesy Pickle’s Potions and Lotions
Mutchler’s hand balm is one of about 80 products she’s developed.
“We figured we could turn that into my lab,” she said. “The upstairs kitchen was too small at that point.”
She intended to just have the lab there.
“But my husband said, ‘Let’s set up our tables in the front of the store and have, like, a pop-up market but a permanent one,” she said. “We tried that and that was a huge hit.”
It wasn’t just locals coming in. Customers who knew the products from craft shows as far away as Bangor and Portland came to the store, she said.
Self-sustaining
“So many people came in that we had to push the lab back and make the store bigger,” she said. “I had to find another place to put the lab, so I went up the street a little bit and found a much bigger lab space.”
Now she has a 1,200-square-foot lab and packaging facility, which she’s rapidly outgrowing.
Mutchler got startup help through SCORE Maine, a nonprofit that is the state's largest active mentoring organization.
“I didn’t have a business background,” she said. “They helped me set up an LLC and know what to do. When I started hiring employees, they were a huge help with that, too.”
The company now has 10 part-time employees, split between Winthrop and Waterville.
Leap of faith
The business mainly grew through bootstrap financing.
“It grew slowly and organically,” she said. “I started with our own money, buying ingredients, and as we sold products I’d buy more ingredients. It was pretty self-sustaining.”
The second store in Waterville was “a big leap of faith,” she said. “Doing something that large-scale was very nerve-wracking.”
Hunt handled fit-up. A soft open in October “did surprisingly well for the quiet month, and it gave us encouragement going into this next season,” Mutchler said.
Both stores are year-round and the couple still does in-person events around Maine.
Overall, Mutchler has about 80 lines of products, many developed in response to people coming to her with specific issues.
“I love to be able to formulate something that’s effective and safe for them,” she said.
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