A Radical Transformation
Indulge me in a game of projection. Picture yourself, a stay-athome mother of three. One of your children has special needs. You’ve just learned that your husband lost his business, your marriage is crumbling and about to end. The bank is going to take your house. You have no income, and no rich relatives swooping in to save you.
What would you do?
Probably not make soap. But that’s just what Sue Kerber did in 2009.
“Everyone thought I was completely insane, and honestly, I don’t really blame them,” Kerber says. “But I’ve been obsessed with natural, artisanal soap my whole life, and one of my sons had eczema, so I had already been experimenting with natural soaps when everything happened.”
In a kitchen at their home in Cohoes, she brewed, basted and boiled (probably did some stewing, too) her way to soaps and lotions that worked so well for her son, and the friends and families who agreed to be her guinea pigs, that she started venturing out to farmers’ markets to sell her wares.
“It was the perfect job for a stay-at-home mom, because I could still take my two boys around to activities and focus on my daughter, who has Down Syndrome,” she recalls. “Then on the weekends and for a few hours here and there during the week, I’d set up at farmers’ markets. From the beginning, the kids were involved, and it was really a big family project.”
She named the line RAD. “What is RAD? It’s radical,” Kerber says. “I needed to radically change my life, and I wanted to radically transform my son’s skin. I wanted the status quo to change. That’s what my soap does for people’s skin, and it’s certainly done so for our lives.”
Kerber accrued a cult following for her line of soaps and lotions, which contain nothing but completely natural ingredients, and none of the parabens, synthetic colors, phthalates or triclosan, many of which have been linked to everything from run-of-the-mill skin flareups to more serious long-term health consequences.
In 2012, the moment that every artisanal entrepreneur dreams of happened to her.
“A rep for Whole Foods tried our soaps and lotions, and she loved them. She asked me to make a presentation,” she recalls. “I went in there, handed out samples of my soap, made a 15-minute presentation, and I was in. The employees loved it!”
By 2015, RAD was in Whole Foods’ stores across the Northeast, at several other chains and indies across the country, including the Honest Weight Food Co-Op in Albany and Healthy Living in Saratoga. Every year, RAD scaled up about 30%, and in 2015, she started making her lines—which, at its height, had 200 products— at a 15,000-square-foot factory in Menands. Kerber also opened a 1,200-square-foot store at Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany.
The expansion has been ambitious and fast, but methodical and measured. “My goal was always to address skin concerns and needs,” she says. “Everything from aging and acne, to more serious issues, and even pain. Once people get hooked on our line, that’s it. I can’t tell you how many people write to me telling me they’ve given up their $100 French face creams for our Chaga Face Cream. I honestly believe that using completely natural, earth-derived ingredients without chemicals, fillers or unnatural scents is the key to our success.”
And no, she wouldn’t let me look inside her beakers. “It’s proprietary!” Kerber says of all of her concoctions. “I won’t even get them patented because I don’t want them to be even on file in the patent office.”
In 2019, Kerber began introducing CBD-infused products to her line, in a bid to help athletes and senior citizens with minor injuries and chronic pain, and also help people with sleep issues. But she has also learned to shave off the excess.
“We’re down to 65 core products,” she says. “These are our top performers, and what we’re known and loved for.” The product that got RAD through the pandemic, actually, was on its way to getting dust-binned.
“Our sanitizer was always a big seller around the beginning of school,but for the rest of the year, it wasn’t performing well,” Kerber says. Needless to say, the pandemic made Germzilla LavendeRex roar again.
“We sold so many bottles this year, the state made us essential workers, we made it happen,” she says. The pandemic, Kerber says, has given her, like many of us, time to pause and reflect.
This year, RAD began partnering with Pine Ridge Industries, a division of Schenectady ARC, which employs a team of intellectually and developmentally disabled adults to assemble and pack products. She also has her sons firmly in place at RAD.
“My eldest Zak, who is 30, helps with our communications and the marketing of RAD, while my youngest, Max, who is 27, is helping to build and grow the business,” Kerber says. “My daughter Alex, who is 29, has Down’s and she is really passionate about writing poetry, and she is focused on that. We all do our part, and I can’t imagine having a better or luckier outcome.”
It’s actually downright RAD.
RAD Soap Co. | @radsoapco
Honest Weight Food Co-Op | @honestweightfoodcoop
Healthy Living
