Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
The Verve magazine competition was held in conjunction with AdvantageWest. The winner is Karra Erickson, owner of Skin Food Topical Nourishment.
In the new issue, which just hit the streets, Editor Jess McCuan writes:
Her big idea: create the ultimate organic skin salve and wrap it up in eco-friendly packaging. Errickson, a 34-year-old Florida native, studied furniture-making at Haywood Community College and admits she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. “I used to be an arty hippie,” she says, laughing. But after getting a degree in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design and spending three years working at the Environmental Bamboo Foundation in Indonesia, things became a little clearer. She wants to use both her design savvy and bamboo to create sustainable products with big impact in the marketplace.
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In Errickson’s case, she and her husband Tyler (and, occasionally, their adorable two-year-old Kaia) sit at a small drawing table in their extra bedroom in Waynesville designing up sleek packaging for various products. The Erricksons co-own a design firm called CoCoChi. At the brand new AdvantageWest Natural Products Laboratory on A-B Tech’s Enka campus, Errickson perfected her first batches of Skin Food Topical Nourishment, the skin salve she’ll sell through her venture, SFTN, Inc. The lotion itself is meant to be used on any body part—arms, face, hands or elsewhere—and it’s made entirely of USDA-certified organic ingredients like coconut oil, palm fruit oil and beeswax.
Click over to read the story and see the others who received honorable mentions. There’s plenty of other goodstuff in this month’s issue of the smartest magazine covering Western North Carolina’s smart, talented, beautiful women, including stories on Asheville’s first legal moonshine maker, Troy Ball, and new artist in town, Cleaster Cotton. Check it.
Congratulations, and we’ll be following Erickson’s progress.
Congratulations Kara!
We enjoyed the partnership with VERVE this year in putting this competition together and were extremely pleased with the response from our women entrepreneurs across the WNC region. With the announcement of the winner – we've received so much positive feedback from potential investors, other entrepreneurs and the community as a whole. Thanks Jason for helping to support our entrepreneurs by posting this. It takes a village to raise an entrepreneur.