The cookie and cupcake soaps available at the Karamelz Shop—an online store owned by North Bergen resident and teacher Melissa Welz—look very edible…perhaps a bit too edible. One of her friends found that out the hard way when Welz began working on her bath and beauty products business in 2016.
“This was the first day that I made soap cupcakes,” Welz recalls. “My two best friends came over to my place and I was like, ‘Don’t eat these; they’re soap!’ My best friend took a sprinkle. She thought it was like candy and was like, ‘Ugh!’ ”
It’s a funny story for Welz to recall. But back when she was struggling to make a mark in business, making and selling bookmarks to help students read before progressing to her beauty products, things were anything but humorous.
She tried selling the bookmarks at various stores in Paramus and Bayonne. “They weren’t doing well at all,” Welz said. “So all the stuff that I made, I gave away to all my students in school.”
But things turned around in ways she didn’t expect. After catching the flu in 2016, Welz was home for a week. She was posting beauty product tutorials on her YouTube channel at the time. Then, her page’s fans began reaching out and suggesting she start her own beauty product company.
“It was nice for them to say that, but you have to know the whole chemistry of how to make this stuff,” she said. “I had no idea what to do.”
Another harbinger of her future appeared on her YouTube’s “recommended” videos section. Welz saw a video of how to make strawberry shortcake soap.
“It was hard, but I just kept watching and watching,” she said. Soon, she was convinced, and during summer 2016, she began taking chemistry classes on how to make her own soaps, lotions, lipsticks, and bath bombs, among other beauty products.
She says that making soaps can be dangerous, and can cause burns when lye-filled water combines with the oils and clays in her soap recipes.
But Welz soon began getting the confidence to place her creations on Facebook and Instagram, offering free samples to friends, including the pal who ate the tasty-looking sprinkle.
Friend-tested
“What I thought was really great is that the community in North Bergen, a lot of my friends on there, I would give them my products for free, and they would tell me, ‘Hey, I think this needs more scent, or it needs more bubbly mix,’ ” Welz said. “So they actually helped me perfect my products.”
Welz let loose with a number of ideas, and officially changed her business from selling bookmarks to making beauty products for sale on the online marketplace Etsy. “At first, the sales were okay,” she said. “I didn’t get huge hits on my products, because I didn’t have that many.”
That all changed when she managed to negotiate her own booth at Braddock Park’s annual arts festival that same year.
On that day, her items sold out.
“Just the whole community, they saw what I can do,” she said. “If it wasn’t for that arts festival, I don’t think I would’ve gotten to where I was.”
But an even bigger triumph happened that day.
“It was the kids’ faces that inspired me,” Welz said. “This one girl, she came from the North Bergen School district, she came to my line and was looking at my products.”
The girl had her eyes on one of Welz’s cake soaps. She ran straight to her booth to ensure she would get a soap product. “I set it aside, but seeing her face, that was like, ‘I’m doing this,’” she said.
Today, at least 49 small stores through the U.S., Canada, and Europe sell her products.
She also packages and sends products via mail. The Karamelz Shop (her shop) not only makes soaps, but bath bombs, lotions, shampoos, whipped soaps and bubble cakes.
On average, Welz said, she makes at minimum 20 different products in her home a week. The most she makes in a week is 1,000. She does most of the work, with friends helping out. Her mother and siblings also help with packaging.
In January 2017, Welz and friend Veronica Franco—also a North Bergen teacher—founded Lumen and Lather. That company sends monthly subscription boxes to buyers. Franco creates items including candles, wax melts, and massage bars, to be sent alongside Welz’s usual creations. Franco also runs her own candle making company on the side, called Waxspurts Candle Co.
Meanwhile, Welz is still the full-time music teacher at Franklin Elementary School.
“It was the kids’ faces that inspired me.” — Melissa Welz
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More than just a successful business
Welz sees her side business as expanding her creative talents. Artists who have multiple abilities shouldn’t limit themselves, she said.
“I believe that if you go to school for arts, you should grow every single day as an artist,” she says. “Why are you going to stick to just singing?”
She hopes her success inspires others. “I teach my kids you have to grow every single day.”
She was set to take her middle school kids to sing at a choral festival in Succasunna, N.J. Friday, March 23. The Franklin School is the only Hudson County school that will attend, she said.
Welz’s creativity also isn’t limited to making cool soaps and teaching singing.
In 2012, she began Ghostlight Productions, a company that stages local musicals around North Bergen. The group took two summers off, beginning in 2016, due to Welz entering graduate school, and one of Welz’s leaders going away to college. “I like to work with a team,” she said. But she said the group is working to return for a show this summer.
Overall, Welz loves inspiring people through her endeavors. And someone in her circle – a close friend — recently took that inspiration.
“I just had someone today text message me, and say, ‘Hey, listen, I want to start my own production company and filming, can you help me?’” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I said, ‘I’ll be home at 8 o’clock; call me then.’”
Hannington Dia can be reached at hd@hudsonreporter.com
