Jeanette Price is a ‘never say die’ kind of person. Faced with tight labor market brought on by a shaky economy, she used her down time to redirect her career and launch a manufacturing business from a spare bedroom.
A teacher with a freshly minted masters degree from the University of Virginia, she could only find work as a substitute. “I sub at literally every school in the Coronado Unified District,” she said. Still, with hours of free time to fill, she decided to turn a hobby, blending fragrance, into a business, Peachy Keen Perfume.
Price (at left, blending fragrances in her workshop) launched Peachy Keen Perfume in January and already, it has grown exponentially. It is sold at a number of local boutiques, including The Hi Sweetheart in La Jolla, The Headquarters in downtown San Diego and Charisma in Coronado. So far, she has created two fragrances – Ocean Boulevard and Torrey Pines. She plans to launch a third, as yet unnamed scent this fall.
Both Ocean Boulevard and Torrey Pines are simple, uncomplicated scents inspired by the Southern California environs. Inspired by Coronado, Ocean Boulevard captures the smell of an ocean breeze with a blend of jasmine, bergamot and musk. Torrey Pines features notes of pine and vanilla.
Recently, Price was invited to showcase her perfume at Unique LA, which featured over 350 made in America brands. “Being selected was a real honor,” she said, especially for a product that is less than a year old.
Peachy Keen comes from Price’s southern roots. She grew up near Farmville in central Virginia, earning a bachelor’s degree in French and English from Hollins University, a tony women’s college, in Roanoke, Virginia. She graduated in 2009, a few months after the financial markets tanked. Jobs were scarce. However, Price credits the school with “making me the person I am – able to be different, inventive and fearless.”
“I came from a small town with very few outlets. When I left Hollins four years later, I had studied in four different countries, became fluent in a foreign language [French], had been a tour guide in Paris, and was brave enough to move to Morocco just four months after graduation,” she added. Price first learned how to blend essential oils while teaching English in Morocco. “Morocco has more essential oils than anywhere else in the world,” Price said. “You can smell the perfumes walking around the markets.”
And because they only cost pennies there, Price was able to “play with” all sorts of oils, even those that are traditionally very expensive to purchase in America. As a result, Price gained experience blending a variety of oils, and learned how to discover her own notes.
Returning home from Morocco, though, Price returned to education and earned a teaching degree, married a military man, moved to Coronado and once again found herself underemployed and looking for ways to reinvent herself. Reflecting on her passion for fragrances, she decided to pursue it professionally.
For a change, her timing was spot-on. Craft perfumes were just taking off, especially on the West Coast. “They’re huge in Seattle and Los Angeles,” Price said. “People are going more toward the artisan blends. They appreciate that the product they are buying is manufactured close to home.”
And Price works hard to ensure that her products are as ‘close to home’ as possible. All the materials she can buy locally, she does. Her bottles and labels are made nearby, and she many soon source her perfumer’s grade alcohol from a local distillery. Additionally, Price works with California-based distributors. Of course, one component cannot be locally made; the essential oils that provide the fragrance, as it is widely accepted that the best are produced outside the United States. And of course, the finished products are blended, bottled, and labeled by hand in Coronado.
Though the production is handled exclusively by Price, she does have help with marketing and design. Lizz Klaras of Custom Creations in Norfolk, Virginia, designed labels for Ocean Boulevard (which features the Hotel del Coronado) and Torrey Pines (which features the Torrey Pines State Park’s famed cliffs). Klaras hand painted both in watercolors. Stacy Barnes does her branding, including her logo and website. Her company Stacy Barnes Creative is based in San Diego.
“Both of these businesses feature amazingly talented women who are also active duty military wives,” Price said. Helping other military wives with their business ventures gives her great joy and satisfaction and her commitment to social justice.
In fact, Price sets aside $10 from each sale to help alleviate child hunger, and she is currently seeking a local charity that helps children directly. There are a number of advocacy groups, but she wants the money to go to a local organization that provides meals to children, over and above the school lunch program.
For Price this commitment to community and charity echoes her philosophy of life: “No matter how far down you are if you believe everything is peachy keen, soon it will be,” she said.
All photos by Elizabeth Zaranka
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Gloria Tierney
Staff Writer
eCoronado.com
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