Twenty-Two Years and a Lot of Soap and Skin Care

The first batch Emily ever made was terrible. She knew it was terrible. She made another one.

That was 1998. She was working out of her kitchen in Southern Oregon, following a recipe she'd found somewhere, adjusting it based on nothing but instinct and a stubborn refusal to accept that the first version was good enough. There was no business plan. No brand name. No particular sense that this would go anywhere. Just curiosity, a little chaos, and a growing pile of batches that didn't make the cut — and a quiet feeling, somewhere underneath all of it, that she was onto something worth chasing.

Because somewhere between the bad batches and the better ones, something shifted. What had started as tinkering became a genuine passion, a desire to create something that felt good in your hands, that smelled like care, that brought a small moment of comfort to whoever used it. She wasn't trying to build a company. She was trying to make something beautiful. The rest, she figured, would sort itself out.

She started selling her bars at farmers markets and artisan fairs across Southern Oregon; not to launch a brand, but to fund the obsession. Enough sales meant more supplies. More supplies meant more time in the kitchen, more experiments, more chances to get it right. She stood behind a folding table and waited to see if anyone cared.

They did. Not everyone, and not right away, but enough. People came back to the booth. They brought their friends. They told Emily what they wanted, and she went home and figured out how to make it.

In 2001, she launched the first Em'z Blendz website. Ecommerce was barely a concept for most small businesses at the time. Amazon had been selling books for six years and was still figuring out whether it would survive. Emily just wanted a way to reach people who couldn't make it to the farmers market. She built it, put it up, and it worked.

The First Door

In March of 2004, Emily signed a lease on a small shop at 93 Oak Street in Ashland. Right next door to the Standing Stone Brewery. The space was tiny. She made the soap in the back and sold it out of the front. If you walked in while she was pouring a batch, the whole room smelled like whatever she was working on that day.

For a full decade, that's how it worked. The making and the selling happened in the same building, sometimes the same hour. No warehouse. No fulfillment center. No separation between where the product was born and where it landed in someone's hands.

That's not how most businesses are built. It's actually the opposite of how most businesses are built. But it's exactly who Emily is.

The Part Where Things Got Complicated

Eventually production outgrew the back room. Around 2014, Emily moved into her own 2,000 square foot production studio. The 93 Oak Street store stayed open as retail. Making and selling finally had their own spaces.

It felt like a milestone. It was. But something about the separation always sat a little uneasy. The shop without the smell of a fresh batch in progress is just a shop.

Em'z Blendz spent 18 years on Oak Street. Then the neighborhood started shifting. Standing Stone had already been closed for over a year when the new tenant decided they wanted all three spaces back, including the Hanson Howard Art Gallery, which had been part of the Ashland arts community for 42 years. When a landlord reclaims that much of a block at once, it's not a nudge. It's a signal. Em'z Blendz moved to 24 N. Bartlett Street in Medford, and the Ashland era officially ended.

Except they weren't done with Ashland.

Then Paris Green closed a few doors down from the old spot on Oak Street. The timing was too good to ignore. Emily and Andy took the space at 77 Oak Street, two doors down from where it all started. They weren't ready to leave that street behind, and now they didn't have to. The Ashland Boutique opened at 77 Oak, and Em'z Blendz was back.

Where Things Stand Now

In 2025, the Medford operation made one more move. Bartlett Street gave way to 232 E. Main Street. A real flagship. A true studio and store together under one roof. Emily makes everything right there, and if you walk in on the right day you can watch her do it. Same as that tiny back room on Oak Street in 2004, except now there's room to actually do it right.

The full-circle moment wasn't accidental. It was a choice. They could have kept production and retail separate, maintained the clean operational divide. They didn't want to. The making and the selling belong together. That's always been true.

So here's where things stand: two stores. The Flagship Store & Studio at 232 E. Main Street in Medford, and the Ashland Boutique at 77 Oak Street, two doors from the original. Emily still makes everything by hand. Every bar of soap. Every piece of jewelry: real stones, real silver, real bronze, no two pieces exactly alike. The line has grown from handcrafted soap to skincare, bath products, and artisan jewelry. Em'z Blendz ships to every state in the country.

That last part still stops us sometimes. What started in a kitchen in Southern Oregon reaches customers in all fifty states now. We didn't plan that. We just kept making things worth sending.

Twenty-Two Years

Most small businesses don't make it to five. We're not going to be preachy about that, but we're not going to pretend it's nothing either. It's something. It's a lot of early mornings and late batches and decisions that could have gone the other way. It's customers who kept coming back and telling other people and sending emails we still think about.

It's Emily, who has never once outsourced the making to someone else. Not because she couldn't. Because that would be a different company.

Thanks for being part of this. Whether you found us last week or you remember standing in that tiny shop on Oak Street when the lye fumes were still settling, we're glad you kept showing up.

"The making and the selling belong together. That's always been true."

-- Emily & Andy Whitlock, Em'z Blendz