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Mellenie Runion and Andy Loll, founders of Truly-Life.
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Loofah vine growing in the garden of Truly-Life in Del Ray.
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A harvest of white lavender from the Truly-Life garden in Del Ray.
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Mellenie and Andy Runion's backyard garden, which grows many of the ingredients for Truly-Life natural body products.
How many business owners can say they got their business started at a dog’s birthday party?
It’s a true story for the Alexandria-based skin care business Truly-Life, which is getting ready to celebrate 10 years in business.
Truly-Life was never meant to be a business in the beginning, says founder Mellenie Runion. Originally, she started making soap just for herself out of all-natural ingredients grown in her Del Ray garden as a way to “stay green.”
However, once friends and neighbors caught a whiff of her decadent, all-natural soaps, the business practically started itself, she says.
Runion is known for throwing a fun birthday party for her beloved dog Max each year, which she says is mostly just a way to get many of the neighborhood dogs together for a playdate while the mommies and daddies socialize.
Much like a child’s birthday party, she would buy inexpensive trinkets to send home with all the guests as party favors – until she realized they were all going unused, and mostly getting tossed in the trash.
“It just seemed like such a waste,” she recalls. So, when the next year came around, she decided to just produce a handful of extras of the soap she was regularly making for herself anyway. It turned out to be a huge hit, she says.
“People just loved them!” She began getting so many requests from friends, family and neighbors that she decided to start small and make a simple website to show off her creations.
Needless to say, everything skyrocketed from there, and Truly-Life Eco Skin Care and Garden Gifts was born in 2008.
A Garden Full of Ingredients
Runion and her partner, Andy Loll, need only step out the back door of their Del Ray cottage to collect ingredients for Truly-Life’s selection of all-natural skin care products, which has grown a bit from merely offering soaps over the years.
Runion’s soaps come in a variety of scents, from lavender, honeysuckle and jasmine to sandalwood, lemon thyme, eucalyptus and more, with ingredients grown right in her garden. As a base for her soaps, Runion says Loll, who is a chemical engineer by trade, helped her create formulas using olive oil and coconut oil.
In addition, Runion makes heart-shaped lotions that look and feel like a bar of soap but hydrate like a lotion when rubbed on the skin.
She also makes soap-infused loofahs, bath fizzes, pomace stones, shaving lather, face masks made from clay or cocoa and seaweed, organic lip balm, and hypoallergenic soaps for dogs.
A Full-Time Business
In the beginning, Runion ran her small, home-based business in her spare time, in addition to working her full-time job. Eventually, as her precious dog Max continued to age, she realized he needed more special attention. Since her online product sales were doing well, she decided to take the leap and try running Truly-Life full time from her home.
“I miss the water cooler moments at work, but I love improving the soil and taking care of my dog, while also making affordable gifts.”
Runion says she considers gifts to be the core of her business, but is delighted that many customers are devoted to using her organic skin care products on a daily basis now as well.
With a full-time schedule to devote to Truly-Life, Runion says the business is truly thriving, and the extra attention has allowed her to cultivate some lucrative partnerships. Truly-Life is now found in the guest rooms of a few local hotels such as The Alexandrian (formerly Hotel Monaco), Morrison House, and just this month, the brand-new Hotel Indigo, which recently opened on Union Street.
Of course, Alexandria is known for its independent boutiques, and now several businesses in town carry Truly-Life products. In addition, they can be found most weekends selling their products out of their booth at the Old Town Farmers’ Market in Courthouse Square.
Runion says she is also happy to hop on her bicycle and make deliveries to people in her immediate area.
By popular demand—not surprising, given how beautiful and peaceful people find her garden to be—Runion has also started hosting Truly-Life special events as well.
In addition to allowing people to book private events in the garden, including intimate parties, wine and craft beer tastings, weddings and photo shoots, Runion has started offering special events such as DIY classes and “spa camps” during the garden’s peak months.
A typical spa camp will walk guests through the process of harvesting ingredients from the garden and making them into basic products like lip balms and bath fizzes and bombs.
“I also teach them how to grow and harvest lavender and use it in sachets, as well as how to use it in cooking,” she says.
They will also occasionally rent out the upstairs suite in their home for people who want to stay a few nights in the Del Ray area, or watch the harvesting process in the garden during key months.
Runion says neighbors are so supportive of her business that some have even offered up some of the space in their gardens to allow her to grow more ingredients.
“I was needing more lavender than I could produce,” she explains. “So in exchange, I cultivate and improve their soil, and then I grow a lot of my lavender in their gardens. It also allows me to save space in my garden for hosting events.”
A Year-Round Business
Of course, these days, there’s not much growing in the garden due to the frigid winter weather. But Runion says they have learned to plan ahead, and grow excess ingredients during the blooming months and then dry it out to store it. They dip into the dry ingredient stash during months like these in order to continue to produce fresh products year-round.
“So nowadays, we are making products out of ingredients we dried out in the fall,” she says.
Other tricks Runion has learned over the years include creating excess compost in the winter, and using rabbit manure to fertilize the garden.
“Compost is good, but you also need some type of manure to feed the soil. Rabbit manure is the only manure that is gentle enough to be able to dump directly onto the soil and not burn off the nutrients or burn the plants,” she says.
When dealing with manure from other animals like chickens or elephants, Runion explains, it has to be composted or left out to age to kind of “calm down” for a long while before it can be put onto the soil and be useful; otherwise the natural chemicals in the manure are too strong and can damage the plants.
All of this means Truly-Life is a 100-percent all-organic business that uses no artificial chemicals to make their products. In fact, the practice has earned them gold-level certification by Green America.
As she approaches Truly-Life’s 10th anniversary this year, Mellenie says, most of all, she feels blessed.
“I’m still a tiny company, but I turn 10 years old this year, and at this point I’m just happy to still be in business. And I know a lot of small businesses don’t make it that long, so I feel very fortunate,” Runion says.
To show that appreciation, Truly-Life has been making donations of cash or products to local organizations each month since at least 2010, adding up to 3 percent of the business’s annual profits. Recipients have included local schools, cancer research funds, the Chamber of Commerce, local Boys and Girls Clubs, churches, charitable events and more.
Runion’s products can be purchased online at Truly-Life.com.
