From Market Stall to Retail Shelves: How Mantra Bee Is Growing

For a long time, most people discovered Mantra Bee with me right there to tell them the story behind it.

At markets, someone could pick up one of our chunky paper lip balm tubes and ask why it wasn't plastic. I could show them how the tube worked, talk them through the different botanical blends and explain why I'd chosen the ingredients inside.

I could watch someone smell Eye of Bergamot, then Citrus Serenade, then Mint Heart, before going back to the first one because that was definitely their favourite.

Those conversations taught me so much.

But somewhere along the way, I realised something.

If Mantra Bee was going to grow, I couldn't always be standing beside it.

Markets taught me things I couldn't have learned behind a computer

Markets were such an important part of Mantra Bee's beginning.

And they weren't always glamorous.

I still remember one of our first markets. It started with rain at about 3 am while we were setting up, then Brisbane did what Brisbane does and followed it with heat and humidity.

There are certainly easier ways to spend a weekend.

But there is something incredibly valuable about putting a product you've created in front of real people and simply watching what happens.

What do they pick up first?

What do they smell?

What makes them stop?

What questions do they ask?

What do you find yourself explaining over and over again?

And, perhaps most importantly, what brings someone back?

I didn't really think of it as customer research at the time. I was simply talking to people about products I loved making.

Looking back, that's exactly what it was.

Every conversation helped me understand Mantra Bee a little better.

I didn't want to build a bigger market stall

As Mantra Bee grew, though, I began thinking differently about what growth actually meant.

The obvious answer for a market-based business is to do more markets.

More weekends. More locations. More stock. More hours.

But eventually I realised that wasn't the business I wanted to build.

I didn't want to build a bigger market stall. I wanted to build a brand.

That didn't mean walking away from markets altogether. I still love the community around a beautiful market, and there will always be special events that are worth packing the car for.

But I didn't want Mantra Bee's growth to depend on how many weekends I could physically be somewhere selling it.

I wanted someone to be able to discover Mantra Bee when I wasn't there.

And that meant changing the way the business worked.

The products had to start telling the story themselves

This has probably been one of the biggest shifts for me.

At a market, if someone wonders why our lip balm comes in a chunky paper tube, I can tell them.

On a retail shelf, the packaging has to do some of that work for me.

At a market, I can explain that Citrus Serenade, Mint Heart and Eye of Bergamot aren't just product names, they're different botanical blends.

On a shelf, the customer has only what they can see, read and experience for themselves.

Suddenly, things that once seemed like little details became incredibly important.

How does the product sit on the shelf? Can someone understand what makes it different? Does the packaging communicate Mantra Bee before anyone has said a word?

That thinking led to our new point-of-sale boxes for our lip balms.

For me, they're more than something pretty to put on a counter.

They're a way for those little paper tubes to start telling their own story.

Then I met a completely different kind of customer

Moving into wholesale also introduced me to a customer I hadn't really thought about when I first started Mantra Bee.

The retailer.

At a market, I'm usually talking to the person who is going to take the product home and use it.

At a trade fair, I'm talking to someone asking an entirely different set of questions.

Will this work in my store?

Will my customers understand it?

What's the shelf life?

How is it displayed?

How many do I need to order?

What support comes with it?

Suddenly I was learning about wholesale pricing, minimum orders, point-of-sale displays, testers, case quantities, shipping, barcodes and all sorts of decidedly unromantic things that happen behind the scenes of a growing brand.

Taking Mantra Bee to Reed Gift Fairs in Melbourne this year really brought that home.

For the first time, I wasn't simply explaining why someone might love our lip balm.

I was explaining why their customers might love it.

It sounds like a small distinction.

It isn't.

Then I saw Mantra Bee sitting on someone else's shelf

There is something quite surreal about walking into another business and seeing something you've made sitting there.

I'm used to seeing Mantra Bee products.

They're in my workspace. They're in boxes. They're on my website. They're inevitably somewhere around our home.

But seeing them properly displayed in someone else's shop feels completely different.

I'm not standing beside them.

I haven't spoken to the person who might pick one up.

The retailer has chosen to give Mantra Bee a little piece of their space, and a customer can discover us without ever having met me.

That feels like a surprisingly big milestone for a small business.

Because those products are beginning to do exactly what I hoped they could.

They're starting to tell the Mantra Bee story without me standing beside them.

Growth looks a little different to me now

I used to think growing a product business meant making more products and selling more of them.

I don't think about it quite that way anymore.

Right now, growth at Mantra Bee looks like better systems behind the scenes.

It looks like packaging that works just as beautifully in a shop as it does in someone's bathroom.

It looks like supporting retailers who have chosen to put our products on their shelves.

It looks like meeting buyers, learning an entirely new side of the industry and occasionally discovering that the next stage of your dream involves a surprising number of spreadsheets.

And yes, sometimes it still looks like packing the car and heading to a market.

But markets are becoming one part of Mantra Bee's story rather than the thing the whole business needs to revolve around.

Perhaps that's the biggest change of all.

From one conversation at a time to something bigger

There will always be something special about handing someone a Mantra Bee product myself.

I love hearing which blend they choose. I love answering questions. I love when someone comes back and tells me they finished something and want another.

I don't want to lose that connection as Mantra Bee grows.

I just want to make the circle bigger.

So when I walk into a shop and spot one of those chunky little paper tubes sitting on the counter, I still get a tiny thrill.

Somewhere, someone might pick it up.

They might wonder why it's made from paper.

They might smell it.

They might take it home.

And Mantra Bee will have travelled just a little further without me having to stand beside it.

Perhaps that's what growth looks like for us now.

Not simply doing more. Building something that can reach further.

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