On Beacon’s vibrant Main Street you’ll find Nourish Natural Soap Company, a fresh and lovely destination for radiant skin and everyday joy. Born of Sage Feighan’s own healing journey, Nourish now offers an extensive line of skin care and self-pampering goodies meant to nourish your skin, ignite your senses, and rejuvenate your overall outlook on life.
“Once someone tries our soaps, they’re in love and a customer for life,” says Feighan. “We are constantly talking to customers and gathering input. When we first opened the store, the first things people asked for were shampoo bars. We delivered, then started introducing products like face masks, whipped body butter, and scrubs, keeping true to our brand promise of nourishment and self-care.”
Born of Sage Feighan’s own healing journey, Nourish offers an extensive line of skin care and self-pampering goodies meant to nourish your skin, ignite your senses, and rejuvenate your overall outlook on life.
Feighan started making soaps to get creative, de-stress, and bring some nourishment and self-care into her own life. Born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, she was living in Princeton, New Jersey when her husband John Papanicolaou first turned her on to the Hudson Valley vibe. “John grew up in Westchester,” she says. “One of his friends lived in Beacon; We visited him there and just fell completely in love with it.”
Both Sage and John preferred natural soaps and found it hard to locate ones as nice as what they had in mind. “We were searching for something more unique, something more nourishing to your skin,” Feighan says, “and having a hard time finding that. Meanwhile, my life hit a stressful patch; I was working in advertising, we were in the middle of our fertility journey, and I found myself obsessing over what to eat and drink and how much to exercise.
I had to dump some of that stress and repurpose it, so I started making soap—watching how-to videos, reading books, finding resources.” As it turned out, Feighan had a knack for the product. “We started just giving it out, and people wanted more and more to give to their friends and family,” she says. “So we started creating shower favors and wedding favors, and we branched out into new products. People just loved our product and wanted to share it with everyone, so we created a website.”
“Once someone tries our soaps, they’re in love and a customer for life.” - Sage Feighan, Owner
Talk about a productive response to stress. Nourish Natural Soaps was formally founded in 2017. In 2020, walking down Beacon’s Main Street, the couple spotted a charming vacant storefront that turned out to be right on budget for them, and the bricks-and-mortar vision became a reality in January of 2021. “We were both working from home at the time so we decided to move forward,” Feighan says. “We knew nothing about retail, but muddled our way through the process, tapping into amazing local resources and friends that magically appeared and were excited to help us.”
“I was working in advertising, we were in the middle of our fertility journey, and I found myself obsessing over what to eat and drink and how much to exercise. I had to dump some of that stress and repurpose it, so I started making soap.” - Sage Feighan
The move from cyberspace to Main Street has been a good one. Soap is the kind of product that’s best when felt and breathed. “The in-store experience has really opened up a whole new way to interact with customers,” says Feighan. “They can see and smell everything and ask questions. We can provide recommendations based on their skin type and issues, and we get so many new ideas for products through many of these conversations. And the most amazing thing to me is that this brand was really created as a way for me to take care of myself—to make self-care a priority during a stressful time—and now I am doing that for so many other people.”
Nourish is still a start-up, Feighan says, and she couldn’t be happier with her journey so far. “I love the happiness that our products bring people,” she says. “So many people send me notes or come in telling me how we cured their rash, or that they no longer need to use lotion because our soap is so moisturizing. I love when someone has never found anything that worked for their extreme case of eczema or for their sensitive skin, and then our product worked. In addition, I feel so grateful that so many people love our stuff so much that they want to buy it for all their gifts. It is so amazing how we continue to organically grow this way.” Becoming an independent entrepreneur has been a learning experience and, as anyone who knows can tell you, a veritable ton of work. “My role is really everything,” Feighan says. “From soap maker to shopkeeper, to strategy, product development, and marketing. I love the ability to make something that is our own, that we made from scratch by hand. Sometimes I cannot even believe that people want to buy all these things that I make.”
You’ll believe it when you get a whiff of Nourish Natural and experience the fun of their store. “I love surprising people,” says Feighan. “So in our online orders I usually provide a free sample to surprise them, based on their order or their past orders. I love the connection and dialogue we share with our community of customers. They are just the nicest people who continue to help us learn and shape this company. I feel honored to be able to introduce people to products that help them to find a moment for themselves, to take action to preserve or improve their own health both mentally and physically.”
Sage and John are still hoping for a baby. “Fingers crossed,” she says. “The business has sort of become my baby at this point. It has helped me remember to take care of myself and take something so difficult and out of my control and turn it into something so beautiful and nourishing to others. I chose the lotus in our logo since often I felt like the lotus returning to the murky water many nights and opening my blooms at the break of day.”
Go see for yourself. You’ll find 10% off everything on each First Friday, and a passion for wellness any day of the week.
Nourish Natural Soap Company
263 Main Street, Beacon
845-440-3922 nourishnaturalsoap.com
