Tander's Tallow: America's Skincare
- KLS
- Aug 19
- 12 min read
For the 202nd feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Tandler's Tallow and Founder, Jessica Tandler. Tandler's Tallow is a veteran-owned personal care brand making unapologetically natural products that actually work. We specialize in tallow-based soaps, deodorants, moisturizers, and lip balms--all made from grass-fed beef tallow, natural clays, and essential oils. No junk. No fillers. Just straight-up effective skincare with grit. Proudly made in America by people who've served and don't settle.
"Together Talks" feature # 202: Tandler's Tallow presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
Story of how it was created?
My husband and I were both in the Army. When we decided to start a family, we knew one of us was going to have to get out because he's special forces and I was an infantry officer. That tempo just doesn't work for both of us to be in. Eventually we decided that I was going to be the one that would get out. He was a lot closer to retirement, that was the decision behind that. I started my transition out of the Army.
We had a wonderful, healthy baby. That just started me down the rabbit hole of really being cognizant of what we ate. We started by getting a beef share from a friend who has a small ranch and he asked if we wanted the fat? I'd heard of cooking tallow before. I took it and figured I'd make cooking tallow out of it. When I started researching how to render it down, then I started finding out that there was all this other stuff you could do with it besides cooking. Animal fat was how humans did skin care and personal care for centuries, before we started shifting over to more petroleum based products and other types of oils that were more mass produced. A lot of beef fat fell out of style. Then as a byproduct of the meat industry is often just thrown away.
I got some essential oils and turned on my stand mixer, to make some moisturizer out of it. I really loved it. That awareness of what was going in our body in terms of food just transitioned to, okay, well, what are we putting on our body? What are we using to clean ourselves, to clean our house? We just one by one started replacing products, not just with stuff that I was making, but other things that just matched the ingredient labels that I was looking to see. Once I made that moisturizer, a little goes a long way. I had a ton of it.
I was giving it away to friends and family. They thought it was a great product. I started selling it on Facebook Marketplace. Then I built a website. And then it just kind of expanded from there. I started exploring other products. That's when I got into making soap, which is primarily what we do now. I worked on a bunch of different methods for making soap. We completely gutted and renovated our kitchen in February to make room. By June, we had outgrown even that and moved into this warehouse space that has AC and everything we need to kind of keep our products stored at an ideal temperature.
We had to decide if we were going to outsource the manufacturing. I really enjoyed making this stuff. I decided, I'm going to put my dollars toward scaling my ability to manufacture this stuff at a larger capacity instead of saving up a bunch of money and then getting in with a co-manufacturer. We keep all of our manufacturing in-house still.
What separates you from your competition?
Competition for us is in the natural and clean label personal care space. Number one, everybody's got their hero ingredients. we're differentiated because tallow is the hero ingredient. We're not the only people doing whipped tallow, like the moisturizers, there's a ton of people doing that. There is not that many companies that are focused on tallow soap and tallow shampoo bars. We're pretty differentiated there. There is one other pretty big tallow soap maker, Healthy Soul, who started a few years ago. They're a little bit ahead of us in terms of being in the game longer. But I was able to look at that and kind of get that confirmation of, people definitely want this. It's not just me and my friends who are being polite. People are actually interested in the tallow ingredient in a soap format.
In the natural space, we're differentiated in terms of our branding, our messaging, and the kind of customer that we're talking to, being the military law enforcement, first responder, blue collar worker, everyday American who is often, I think, overlooked. By the branding that natural personal care products use a lot of their brand, it's very feminine, it's very crunchy, it doesn't scream effectiveness. It really leans on the ingredient label and we lean on our ingredient label as well. But we're leaning in on our performance, when I tell you my deodorant works, I'm telling you that because my husband puts it on and he goes to a sniper range all day and he comes back and I smell his armpit and it's all still deodorant smell. We're really field testing our products in harsh environments. People that work outside, they work long hours, I think that those types of people are just overlooked in the natural care space. I think a lot of brands think that the average everyday American grocery shopper doesn't care about ingredient labels and that's changing. We're right in that space talking directly to those people.
What have been the biggest challenges?
We're bootstrapped completely. We haven't taken any loans. We have people who want to invest. We have not taken them up on that offer yet. We have to be very mindful of where every single dollar goes. If I'm trying to buy a bunch of raw materials to fill a big order that I know is coming, that's probably going to mean that I don't have as big of a marketing budget. When you don't have a big marketing budget, it's really hard to get help on the marketing side. I've had to learn how to do marketing, which is incredibly challenging because that is a profession in and of itself for a reason because it's hard. Being mindful of where our dollars are going, we've we focused on investing in our in house manufacturing capability first. Whether that's raw materials, equipment, employees, to do those tasks before we invest in like bringing in a CFO or bringing in a marketing or sales team. It just happens at a slower rate when you're using your own money to do it.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
When I was getting out of the military, I wasn't getting out to make tallow soap. That's for sure. I was getting out to be with my son and not drop him off at daycare and then I run off and do something else. We're fortunate with my husband being in the Army. We live very well within our means and we decided instead of taking a vacation every year, we're just going to keep our child out of daycare and keep him at home. As we grow this, there's always that question as a mom of "am I going to reach a point where I'm going to have to parent differently than I want to?" That's kind of on the personal side. But that's where it comes into our dollars, are we going to invest in some more employees so that I'm kind of working on the business, not in the business type of thing.
Right now we're not at the point where I'm having to face that that issue because I can bring him to the shop with me. But as we grow and fill up more space in here, it's not going to be an ideal place for him to spend a long time. I come in right now and I don't do more than four to five hours in the shop. That's kind of what he can tolerate without getting bored and wanting to do something else. If it gets to the point where we just need more hours put in than what me and my one employee can do right now, then we got to hire on additional help.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
it's weird to think of myself as an entrepreneur, because I feel like I just there's so much that I don't know. Biggest things that I've learned was how to operationalize. When I cook at home, I rarely use recipes, I just kind of go off of vibes. When I was first making soap and moisturizers, I wasn't measuring my essential oils, I would do it off of smell. Then it became if someone else were to do this, what are the instructions that you're going to give them. When it comes into calculating your costs, the founder is probably the last person that's going to get paid when they're doing a startup. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't calculate the hours it takes you to make or the minutes that it takes you to make one bar of soap into your costs. Because eventually, you're not going to be making it anymore. The person that's making it is an employee that you're paying. If you don't calculate that into your costs early on, which I didn't do. I had these great, super low prices, when I first started, that just were not sustainable to grow a business.
I felt like I didn't want to be greedy. I don't want to raise my prices. But I want as many people as possible to have access to natural skincare. You have to iterate on your prices, because you're not going to nail it the first time, you're not going to nail your packaging the first time. When it came to pricing, when I did have to do a price increase, I did it as soon as I knew that I was going to have an issue, with the next month of making this stuff. I was upfront and transparent about it with our customers. But because we have a great product, I didn't really get any backlash, and people kept buying it. They were fine with it, they understood what we were doing.
When it comes to packaging, because I designed all of our packaging, I did our website. I was not willing to invest a bunch of money in packaging and branding and the website early on, because I knew I was going to change it. I just went with that MVP, the minimally viable plan, of this label is good enough for the couple farmers markets and Facebook marketplace. It's super cheap to make, so let's just go with it. Then when it came time to look at expanding our D2C channel, getting onto Amazon, and then eventually getting into retail, the packaging has to make these iterative changes. But if you overanalyze your packaging right away, before you know where and how you're going to sell it, you'll just get into that analysis paralysis, and you'll never make a good product.
We were product-focused. Operationalizing the product, figuring out where do customers buy soap, and then tailoring our packaging to meet them there. That was probably the biggest thing because I didn't know anything about packaging. I shop a lot more consciously now when I'm in the grocery store. That's a data point of this packaging is screaming at me. Why? You know, can I implement that in my own? Or I'm on Instagram, I'm flipping through reels, this got me to stop scrolling. Why did it get me to stop scrolling? You can learn a lot by, and save a lot of money by paying attention to your own behavior as a consumer. And then implementing that in how you do business.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I just love hearing from customers because as a founder, you do a lot of work in the dark before a product ever hits my website. I've tested it. My husband has tested it. I figured out how to produce it at scale. I've made new packaging for it. I've bought a barcode. I've done a bajillion forms on various online platforms to get it uploaded. There's all that work that goes on in the dark before a customer ever sees one of our products.
When you sell D2C online, or even in retail, you don't have a lot of touch points with customers, which is why I still do farmer's markets. I will continue to do farmer's markets until I just don't have the time for it anymore. Because I don't get to see somebody in an independent grocery store pick up my soap and smell it. I don't get to see that reaction. The farmer's markets are really big. I'm not just getting data. It's honestly rewarding for me because I've done all that work. To see the surprise on a customer's face when this natural soap that only has essential oils in it for scent smells really great, or even a review online as hard as those are to come by when they come in.
I am glued to the screen because I'm just so excited. That's the most rewarding thing, bringing a product to customers that surprises them that they actually really like. Then kind of hearing on the backend, "my son had eczema, we started using your soap and it cleared it up". You're making a change in somebody's life. I don't feel that every day in the shop. But I know it's out there, but it feels so good when you hear about it.
What is your why?
Goes back to the branding and the people that we're talking to. Like military law enforcement, first responder, blue collar workers in the military, we're exposed to so many toxins that we do not have control over. You have to be next to a vehicle that's running, and you're just getting all that JP8 fumes or we've heard a lot about the burn pits during the global war on terror and all the health problems that's caused people. Firefighters, all the toxins that they inhale when they're on the job. The why is giving control back to people who aren't in control of the toxins that they're exposed to throughout the day.
I'll give you control. I'll give it back to you back in your shower. I'll give you control back in your bathroom. You're not going to have to worry about this one thing that you're using or that you're exposed to during the day because we've got your back. There's nothing weird in here. That's why I started making it, and that's why we continue to.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
In June, we got the keys to our shop, and then we started putting all the tables together and putting the shelving together and moving all of our product that we had. Moving all that product out here, dealing with the stress of orders are still coming in, and my product is in, three different places right now. That was a really stressful, white-knuckling two weeks. We spent a lot of money to get into a space and furnish it, but you haven't reaped the benefits of setting yourself up to scale yet.
You feel like you're hanging out over the edge. I remember I got up, I packed lunch for me and my son, loaded up the diaper bag, and I got in the car. I started driving to my shop, to my production space, my little manufacturing space in the United States of America. That moment, that first day where I was driving in, and I knew all I was going to do that day was, show up and make soap and fill orders.
That was just the best.
Piece of Advice
My biggest piece of advice that kind of goes through life, what I know from the Army and what I know from being a founder is just trust your gut and be fearless.
Not just with work stuff, but with parenting, getting out of the army was a scary thing. It was all I have done since I was 20 and I'm 32 now. The army has to become part of your identity. That's how soldiers do some of the heroic and crazy stuff that they do. It's because that's who they are, they're a soldier. Transitioning away from that was scary, but I trusted my gut because I knew that that was what was right for my family.
I was going to figure it out and then when it came to making these products that were important to me and using in my household. Then it turned into do we do we do a business out of this? Do we start selling this stuff to people? Are they even going to want it? You trust your gut. Yes, they will, because I want it. I'm just like everybody else, of course they're going to want it. Investing into a manufacturing space, when we are a family who survives off of one income, that's a big bite. There's been plenty of times where, you're kind of just in this holding pattern of okay, I've got this big manufacturing space now, I've got my systems down, I'm ready to scale, but does the market want me to scale?
You've got to do your work up front before you know for sure. You can do all this market research but it's on you. There have been plenty of times where I was lying awake in bed, as many founders do and I remind myself, you got to be fearless. You're going to figure this out, you're going to be fine, trust your gut, you have not been wrong yet. You got to this point. Just keep going and don't let those weird little lulls because not every single day is action packed. Trusting your gut and being fearless through those gaps or where you feel like you're hanging out over the edge, you're going to get the reward.
I'm a woman of faith, so it's pretty easy for me to put it all on God. If he doesn't want me to make soap, he's probably got a plan that's way better. It's very easy for me to remember that and step back. I would encourage people to find that faith and just to listen, listen to God and he's not going to steer you wrong. Whatever plan he has for you is way better than the plan that you have for yourself.
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In Closing
KLS wants to thank Tandler's Tallow and Founder, Jessica Tandler, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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