Our Story

Established in January 2011, Bodhi Basics is a local one-stop deodorant & plant-based skin care shop in St. Petersburg, Florida. How did it all begin? After years of trial and error with store bought products causing terrible skin problems I decided to start tinkering with making my own soap. While living in a kind friend's living room I turned the kitchen into a makeshift laboratory on the weekends while working as a studio assistant to two artists during the week. There was a lot of trial and error in the beginning, but I knew even then that I only wanted the highest quality, organic, botanical ingredients in my products. No junk, no artificial crap, no synthetic fragrance. I wanted everything to be directly traceable to something that grows or comes out of the earth in it's pure form.  

The name Bodhi Basics has multiple meanings for me personally. Bodhi is the name of my best friend (you can meet him if you ever stop by the shop. He is our official greeter). It is also the sanskrit term for knowledge and awakening. I think of the meaning of Bodhi whenever I am creating a new product or fine-tuning our branding. It's simple, it's true, it is a striving to get skincare back to the basics that have been used for centuries.  Plant-based, real, authentic, and infused with the wisdom of nature.

We have been slowly growing since our beginning days in 2011 and we plan to keep it up. All of the products are (and will always be) made by hand. While this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is. The time that it takes to make a single tube of our lip lube is comparable to a machine making hundreds. While it may be the slow way, it is also ensures that each product is made with love and we can keep a close eye on quality. It's worth it to us and we believe you can see and feel it in our products.

All of our products are tried and tested multiple times before they hit the shelves (or the internet). They do have a shorter shelf life due to the lack of synthetic preservatives, but we do make sure that they will last for a long time no matter what climate they are in. All of our products always have the ingredients labeled accurately and visible. We are about telling the truth and telling the story of each product.