How Roberta Perry Built the Sugar Scrub Every Other Jar Got Wrong?
Sugar scrub as a retail category is mostly formulated to look good sitting in a jar. Most products on shelf lean on scent and packaging, without solving for the specific frustrations- greasiness, weak grit, a mushy texture- that show up the moment someone actually uses it on dry skin.
Roberta formulated ScrubzBody from the opposite direction: a running list of specific complaints gathered from buying and trying competitor jars, and a formula built to resolve all of them at once. Running out of room in her garage after five years of growth was a forcing moment. A brand with weak underlying demand does not outgrow its production space. ScrubzBody did, and it kept growing from there.
About Roberta Perry
Roberta Perry is the founder of ScrubzBody, a sugar scrub and body care brand built on a formula she originally created to manage her own dry skin. She built it because the sugar scrubs already on shelves each failed her somewhere: too greasy, too smelly, too granular for her face, or too mushy with no real grit. Her home remedy became the product line.
ScrubzBody’s scrub combines the qualities Roberta liked across dozens of other jars while leaving out what did not work, without excess grease, without overpowering scent, without a texture too coarse for the face or too mushy to feel like it was doing anything. Production started in her kitchen and moved into her garage, where it stayed for five years before the business outgrew the space. The brand has now run for more than 16 years, built largely through local craft fairs, in-store events, and a decade-long charity partnership rather than paid advertising.
Key Takeaways
- Product origin: Roberta built ScrubzBody’s flagship scrub to solve her own dry skin, cataloging specific complaints- grease, smell, granularity, mushiness- across competitor products before formulating her own.
- Team structure: Her late sister Michelle joined early, adding a retail sales background that filled a gap neither Roberta’s graphic design nor telecom sales experience covered.
- Production history: A home garage served as the production facility for five years before the business outgrew it and moved to a larger space.
- Early marketing: Local craft, holiday, and school fairs, plus a 10-year charity partnership with WTFC.org, built the brand’s early audience without a paid marketing budget.
- Operating rhythm: Sixteen years in, Roberta still checks HARO requests daily and writes email marketing content in batches ahead of time.
You didn’t come from a skincare background. What carried over from your earlier jobs?
If you would have told me 16+ years ago that I was going to start a skincare business, I would have thought you were crazy. What did I know about skincare? My background was in graphic design, and I was freelancing from home after the birth of my children, so it was perfect. I also somehow, it was a friend of a friend, fell into a telecom sales job and then, later on, became marketing director of a failed adult education start-up. Each job gave me something to take with me, and so after I had formulated our scrub, the rest fell into place. I don’t think I could have started ScrubzBody Skin Care Products without all the knowledge I had gained from my other businesses, success or failure.
You started production in your kitchen and then moved to a garage. What was that period like?
After creating our formulas, my late sister, Michelle, joined me in the business to help figure out how to sell it. She had a bit of a retail sales background, so her ideas were very helpful. But marketing on a budget is hard, so we had to figure out other ways to have customers get to our website or get to us. We showed up at every local craft fair, holiday fair, school fair and more. We gave out raffle prizes to charities and hosted our own event, The Breast of Everything, with WTFC.org, Women Together Fighting Cancer, for 10 years, which gave us a chance to get picked up in the local newspapers and get free publicity. We created a production space in my garage so we could move out of the kitchen, and grew our business there for five years until we had no choice but to move to a larger space.
What does a typical day running ScrubzBody look like now?
Each day looks different from the day before. If I open the shop, I set up for the day and make sure everything is in place. I then go through the Help a Reporter Out emails to see if there is something that would be a good fit for me to answer. I love HARO as a way to get our name and links to our business out there. I then see if there are orders to process and anything that needs my attention. I love serving the customers that come in. I also try to stay ahead of my email marketing, so I am always writing posts for future sending. Ordering items and daily business chores make up the rest. The mood in the store kicks up a notch or three on the days guests come in for our Make Your Own Scrubz Parties, and we get walk-ins too, so the day can take on a party feel any day of the week.
How did you actually land on the final scrub formula?
I had created the scrub for myself to tackle my own dry skin. I was buying up so many jars of other brands beforehand that my husband started calling me Goldilocks. I liked some things about each brand, but found fault with each one as well. They were too greasy, or too smelly, or too granular to use on my face, or too mushy with not enough grit. Instead of buying another “porridge,” I finally decided to make my own, using all the great things I had liked and learned about and changing all the bad, to make what we believe is the perfect sugar scrub.
What do you think actually sets ScrubzBody apart after 16 years?
We make incredible high-end skincare that makes skin sing with joy, but it’s the way we think about our customers’ needs and how we serve them that really sets us apart from others in a similar business. I am very aware that people have many places to spend their money. When they choose to spend it with us, I take that responsibility very proudly and very strongly. I want our customers to love the experience of shopping at ScrubzBody as much as they love how their skin feels after using our products.
Lessons for Founders
- Personal need-driven formulation, built from a specific list of complaints rather than a general “better product” goal, produces something genuinely different from what’s already on shelf.
- Every unrelated job before the business, design, sales, a failed startup, can still hand you a skill you didn’t know you’d need later.
- Free local press, built through repeated community commitments rather than one-off appearances, compounds in a way a single paid campaign doesn’t.
- Outgrowing your own production space is a demand signal worth listening to, not a problem to delay solving.
For more founder stories and growth strategies from operators who have built from the ground up, read more at eFounder.club.
