The Brand Exposing What Others Hide | Behind the Brand

All righty, Jen. I am so grateful that we met recently at that festival because it's just a joy having you guys be a part of Organuary. And I'm— I just, I can't wait to kind of dig into your story and what inspired you to start Zebra because I know it's, it's actually kind of similar to mine. I mean, it's, it's about our families, it's about our kids. So will you just share a bit about what was going on for you when you, what you were seeing in other brands that inspired you and what was going on in your personal life to inspire you to start Zebra?

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So I was just a mom. I had a a really thriving business as an artist. I built a brand that started out small and grew to a worldwide art brand with customers all over the country and customers all over the globe. Eventually expanded it into a wallpaper line and a clothing line. And so everything was good professionally and everything was good with my family. And then about 5 years ago, my Um, youngest child started complaining of stomach pain, and I took her to the doctor. They couldn't explain it. They ruled out appendicitis and virus and all these things, and the pain was so bad that she was actually passing out in my arms from the pain. So you met her, um, at AmFest. She's now 11, but this was back, um, when she was pretty small. So I kept taking her to the ER, and they couldn't explain it. And it was just, go home, it's probably viral. Finally, on the last ER visit, they realized that she had an ovarian cyst the size of her ovary. And, um, she was only 4 years old.

Oh my goodness.

They don't see that in 4-year-olds. Uh, so they rushed her into emergency surgery. I was just dumbfounded that that's what was happening. And after They called me back with the pathology reports. They said, we're really sorry that it took us this long to find this. They knew I'd been coming to the ER over and over and doctors over and over. And they said, we just don't see this in a 4-year-old. So they said the closest case age range we could find is a 13-year-old having a cyst on their ovary this size and this magnitude. And so it just sent me down this path of, okay, if she's kind of a medical unicorn, why did this happen to her? And so I just started doing research into the products and the things we were eating and came across the organic grape juice that we were eating or drinking, that she'd been drinking for years, was currently— had a lawsuit pending for having a hormone disruptor in the juice.

What? In grape juice?

Yeah. So, I was like, that is terrible. And, I'm not saying that that juice caused what happened to her, but it was just this moment where I was like, wow, I didn't even fathom that an organic product could have something harmful in it.

It was organic grape juice at that. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

So, I had felt like I had always tried to do the right things and pay more money for the good products for my children. And so, it was just really disheartening. And then about 6 months later, my son, who you also met, was struggling with migraines. He had been for quite some time, and we, we had been taking him to the neurologist, and they just kept saying, we don't know, they're complex migraines, we're not sure why, here's a prescription. And the migraines were really strange, like his tongue would go numb, and he would like see floaters. And so they weren't just regular headaches. And I never got the prescription filled again because we're, you know, a holistic-minded family. I just kept saying to them, but what's the cause? Why would he have these? And so we started to try to focus on things for a teenage boy that, you know, sometimes are lacking, like diet or sleep or, you know, trying to rein in the social media usage, like whatever we could do to help him stay on a healthy path. And nothing was working. And so one day he had an event at school where Where he lost all of his vision and he started slurring his speech and he lost control of his arms. And it basically was like stroke-like symptoms. And so finally, when he regained his sight, which was about 5, 10 minutes later, he started texting me what was happening. And I just picked him up at school and I said, buddy, I know the doctors say these are migraines, but we just need to go to the emergency room and just Get some imaging done and just cross all the weird stuff off the list.

A mother knows. Mother instincts. You always know. You always know.

Yeah. And, you know, 13 hours later they came back and said he had a mass on his brain. And I just was sitting there like, you know, it was just one of those surreal moments where I looked at him and I wanted to cry, but I said, it's okay, buddy. Like, we're gonna figure this out and I know God's gonna use it. And so it sent us on this path of consulting with neurosurgeons all over the country. And the location of the brain tumor was really strange. And people again were saying like, we've never seen anything like this before. This is just really odd. The location's odd. The symptoms are odd. We're not sure if you should do surgery. Johns Hopkins told us not to do surgery and that he might end up, you know, like a vegetable for the rest of his life. And so that was—

Oh, that's scary.

And then we consulted with other neurosurgeons. Ultimately, our neurosurgeon in Dallas felt confident that he could remove the tumor and that he would have a normal life. So we went ahead with surgery. During the surgery, he came out and said, I have never seen anything like this before. I'll be right back. He literally went to go do some research while my son was in the operating room. Wow. Came back, said, I have a plan. Um, surgery finished. After surgery, he said, this is so rare. I'm estimating this to be like 1 in 24 to 1 in 26 cases in the world. And again, I was just like, wow, like, yeah, it's really strange. Um, so we got through the brain surgery and, you know,

And he was referring to the tumor was weird,

right? The tumor location and just the— yeah, the whole case just was very unusual. So I sat down, you know, healing from brain surgery is a long process, and I was just trying to think of all the things I could do to support him and continuing to have a healthy life and healing. And so I sat down with all the products we were using They were all organic, natural products. It wasn't like there was anything that I thought was going to be odd or weird, but I just wanted to research every ingredient and make sure that we were making the very best choices. And so I started with the daily use products like toothpaste and deodorant. And what I found was really upsetting to me, um, the natural toothpaste that I was paying $12 for, um, it was a hydroxyapatite toothpaste. I didn't like a lot of of the ingredients, the deodorant. Um,

let's actually unpack that a little bit. What are some of those ingredients and some of the causes you were seeing? Do you have— do you have that kind of in your minds?

So, um, one of the ingredients that was in this quote natural toothpaste, um, that was being marketed as safe to swallow was sorbitol. And sorbitol is not a natural sweetener. And so I was like, that's, you know, that's kind of misleading. Um, propandiol is commonly a preservative that is sourced from China, um, most times grown on GMO corn from China. So I don't know how this particular company was sourcing their propandiol, but it's a propylene glycol derivative. And, um, it's just, I, I didn't think that that was a great ingredient. Um, now I, I now have issues with hydroxyapatite and we'll get into that, um, later, but Uh, the hydroxyapatite was fine with me at that time. Um, and then the deodorant, you know, chemical fragrance is marked most commonly as fragrance on deodorant, so people don't realize that fragrance is usually petroleum-derived. So these natural deodorants are getting away with writing fragrance on their deodorants. Or, you know, sometimes baking soda is synthetic in there, or it's mined with chemicals, and they don't have to disclose that. And what people don't realize is most of the personal care products, even if they're made in the US, are sourcing ingredients from China, which are, you know, known to be compromised. And, um, so there's no way to really know what is truly in our, um, personal care products because there is no definition of natural per the FDA in cosmetics. So anyone can slap natural on the label they can source these ingredients from, you know, subpar vendors, um, and make a product look a lot cleaner and a lot healthier than it is. And so I was just really disturbed because there's, there's an ingredient called azurkarite, which is in a lot of natural deodorants, and then there's corn ingredients and natural deodorants that are derived from Um, GMO corn. Uh, the ozonide is most commonly petroleum-derived. So people are thinking they're using a natural deodorant and it's still got a bunch of chemicals in it.

Yeah, it's— I mean, obviously it's no different than our food, right? It's these— there's this kind of illusion of health or this illusion of transparency, as you're mentioning, because you'll see words under the ingredients. Most of the time, particularly in toothpaste and deodorants, you don't know what half of those words mean. Sometimes in food as well. But the part that people don't realize is there's carriers of these things, and that's, that's also what you're talking about, is that there'll be ingredients within ingredients and they're not listing those. That shows up all the time in food under natural flavors or artificial flavors. You don't know what those are. It just says natural flavors, but you don't know all the different ingredients within that, and sometimes they're extreme. Um, well, good for you for unpacking Pandora's box, because this is clearly a huge issue— the, the dominance of the toothpaste and deodorant industry, and as you mentioned, even the natural-marketed products within that industry Are clearly not as transparent as you wanted. So what did you focus on then when you started Zebra?

So, you know, it was through that ingredient research, realizing that the products I was buying and paying top dollar for were actually lying to me, that I said, okay, I need to find better products for my family. And I just started researching to try to find better products and realized that this is the system we're in. Most products are lying to us and most products are sourcing ingredients from untrusted countries and most companies are putting profits over people and people's health is not their main priority. And so it was kind of at that moment where I said, okay, I'm gonna have to make my own products. And if I'm gonna have to make my own products and I'm mad enough to do that, I think this is a problem not just for me, but for a lot of people in America. I, I think everyone has a story of buying a product that they thought was healthy and then realizing, oh my gosh, that ingredient is in there, or oh my goodness, this is actually not as clean as I thought. And, you know, it's, it's a wide-scale problem. So I started Zebra not really knowing much about the cosmetic industry, but What I've learned was just so eye-opening. Every vendor call that I would have when I was interviewing them to work with Zebra as far as formulating and manufacturing our products, the first question that they asked me was, what do you want your unit cost to be?

Interesting.

And I was so taken aback by that. I would say, what? How would I even know what the unit cost is going to be? I'm going to source the ingredients first and whatever they cost, They cost. And most companies are not approaching things like that. They're going in and they're saying, we want our unit cost to be this so that our profit margin can be this so that our retail price can be this. And whatever it takes to get there, they go backwards into how they source the ingredients.

It makes me think of, so when I was starting Pluck, I had a conversation with a I guess a manufacturer, and they put me in contact with their— with their— the person who helps to, to put the recipes together in their, in their factory. And he worked a lot with flavorings, and he said, well, why can't we not use any organs and just put in the meat flavoring? And I was like, what? Like,

right,

didn't make— I'm like, that's— but that's not the point,

right? Exactly. But that's cheaper, and that's what most, most companies would want to do, you know. They want to cut corners. They want ingredients that appear to be healthy, but they're, they're cheaper. And so I actually, um, got fired by my deodorant manufacturer. I was working with a deodorant manufacturer. They agreed to, you know, source the ingredients the way I was requesting. And our toothpaste and deodorant, we sourced no ingredients from China, and that was just a brand standard from the very beginning. But that got very annoying for them when I was telling them they had to communicate with the essential oil farmer in France who didn't have a cell phone and that he was only available via email, you during these hours. And they just got to the point where they were done with me because that was so outside of their box and how most companies function that they did not want to expend the time and effort to source the ingredients in the way that I wanted them sourced. And so they fired me as a client. And that was a huge roadblock for us because we had to reformulate and find a new manufacturer. But Totally worth it. Like, yeah,

it's like the learnings you get, you know, along the way. Of course they hurt. It stings when you first— when it first happens, of course. And, and so when you found that manufacturer, what, what were kind of the— what were the criteria that you had for the ingredients you put in Zebra? Which I just want to point out, if anyone hasn't picked up on this, I know it might be obvious, but I'm just going to speak to it. Zebra, meaning black and white ingredients, like full transparency, right? And, uh, I just, I just love that. I think your branding, it really speaks to your artistic, you know, um, perspective or your artistic talent.

I appreciate that. Yeah, I will say I can't even take credit for that name. I give credit to God fully. I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream with that name. And I said to my husband, it's zebra ingredients that are black and white, like the Constitution and the Bible. And so it was more than just, um, the ingredients for us. You know, we were building this brand, um, post-COVID. Um, I was a fed-up consumer with toxic products, but I was a fed-up consumer with the system, and I was seeing people be gaslighted with health. And I was 100% sure that when I built this brand, I wanted to make sure that everyone knew what our values were, and that we are a Christian conservative brand. And we are unashamed in what we stand for. And so it's all wrapped up in the, in the Zebra package. And we just, we truly want people to understand that We want to treat them like family. That's why we say welcome to the herd, you know, when they become a Zebra customer. And we, we want to honor God in how we make our products, how we treat our customers, and how every ingredient— although you can't pick all of our ingredients directly from a tree, we're trying to get as close to honoring our systems and the systems that God designed Um, with our products. And so that's one of the reasons why I have such an issue with hydroxyapatite right now, because I believe, um, so many people think this is a healthy ingredient, but it's actually working against how God designed our remineralizing system in our mouth.

We'll talk about that because that, that definitely brings up the question of like, you don't necessarily have a background in this, right? I mean, you, you said you didn't even come from this world. So how did you establish your— I mean, clearly you're speaking to your mission, but how did you establish your standards and what is it based on? I'd love you to dive into that.

Yeah, so it's based on my research and just experience from other consumers and other mothers. And so when I was first, um, formulating the Zebra Toothpaste, I was so in love with hydroxyapatite. I thought, oh my gosh, this is the answer. We've all been wanting a fluoride Yeah. Replacement. We know fluoride's bad. We know it's a neurotoxin. We know it calcifies the pineal gland and does all sorts of other things in the body. So hydroxyapatite is incredible. It's like bioidentical to the teeth and it remineralizes. This is amazing. So we were formulating a hydroxyapatite toothpaste. It took us a year. I developed what I thought was the perfect hydroxyapatite toothpaste. But while we were formulating it, I was the type of person that wanted to prove to myself, no matter what, why each ingredient was going to be in our formula, even if I thought it was good. I mean, even down to coconut oil in our deodorant, I had to prove to myself why it should be in there. Um, so I relentlessly researched hydroxyapatite, not to mention my family was using it, I had tons of friends using it, and I started to see chatter On Instagram where people would go on a hydroxyapatite toothpaste post from an influencer and say something like, hey, I've been using hydroxyapatite toothpaste and I have more cavities than I've ever had. And the post would quickly get deleted, the comment would get deleted. Or people kind of questioning why their oral health was actually declining after using hydroxyapatite for a while. Now, there's so many glowing reviews of it as well. So don't get me wrong, some people really like it, but I kept seeing that and I kept doing more research, and there's no study out there that is hydroxyapatite safe. So you have to read a lot of studies on oral care, and then there are some studies about animals and how animals react to hydroxyapatite. So when I read those, that gave me major pause because calcified can collect in the human body and in tissues, so it can calcify. in tissues. They believe it can still calcify in the pineal gland. So I was like, okay, so maybe this is great for the mouth, but what is it doing to the rest of the body? And so animal studies show it causes oxidative stress to the body. And I was like, this is not as perfect as everyone thinks it is. Let me keep digging.

Hmm.

Then in an oral care study that I read, actually several, I came across some research in how saliva works. Saliva is our God-given defense system. This is how we remineralize our teeth. So from the moment we take in food, the saliva starts breaking down and doing all sorts of magical things in the mouth. It's really amazing, and it uses enzymes, um, to separate things that cause plaque and tartar. And so there's 2 enzymes. One of them is called proline. It's derived from red meat, um, and that enzyme is used to separate calcium and phosphate. Calcium and phosphate is what tartar and plaque are made of, but hydroxyapatite is actually a calcium-phosphate bond. Oh. So, it was like, what? We're actually putting in a bonded molecule into our mouth that our body naturally is trying to separate to prevent calculus. So, that was like, wow, well, that makes sense. Why people are experiencing increased cavities, increased plaque. And I'm not saying that happens with everyone, but I do believe that people who have been using it for a while and have had negative effects from it, it is because of this particular element and how it works against how God designed us to remineralize and prevent cavities.

That is fascinating. And so how long has your brand been out?

We're a baby brand. We just, um, officially launched in June, so we're, we're just a little over 6 months old.

Wow. Well, congratulations first of all, um, because you've already, uh, put together a really great following and dedicated customers. You're— you've been working though with your toothpaste and probably using it for much longer than that, right? So what kind of effects are you seeing from The toothpaste you created versus even that, you know, version one with the hydro the oxate, right? The the I'm not even.

It's hard to say the hydroxyapatite. Yeah,

yeah, appetite. Yeah.

My family had experienced also a ramp up in cavities with hydroxyapatite, and I did not even attribute it to the toothpaste at all. Because again, I was so on the team. I thought hydroxyapatite was absolutely wonderful. But we've been using in my family our toothpaste for over a year, and. You know, we haven't seen any cavities. We have customers who are just starting to come up on their 6-month checkup with using Zebra, and they're they're saying you know great checkups. We attribute that to xylitol being one of our top ingredients, which is the gold standard in inhibiting the bad bacteria and you know helping prevent cavities and oral care. And unlike many brands who use xylitol, we're not sourcing it from China. Um, so we're sourcing it in a super clean way from Europe. So

is, is all xylitol the same, or is that kind of your point of sourcing? Like, is, is China sourcing xylitol in a, from a different, in a different way? And if so, what?

Yeah, so, um, China is— most xylitol, even if it's marked organic, is still sourcing it from GMO corn. You know, there's no organic oversight in China, so it's just wild to me. A lot of these ingredients that are, you know, so-called organic, the oversight is just not there to qualify that or confirm that.

Yeah, that's interesting. Did you actually travel to any of the ingredient sources to see them? I know sometimes even that's enlightening, but have you had a chance to do any of that kind of digging?

I have not traveled to any of our ingredient manufacturers. I have communicated with every ingredient, um, manufacturer that I have sourced, and I have visited the menu— the actual manufacturers who are making products.

Yeah, it's always interesting. Like, I— like, even for us, the Orgameats, like, I, I didn't get to go to the, to the place where it's manufactured, uh, in New Zealand, but our Um, someone who I used to work with did, and they confirmed that it was all legit. But it's like, sometimes you— I get worried about that even, of like, oh, is this, is this going to be what they're selling it as? Which I know many businesses run into. Sometimes businesses have the best intentions, but the manufacturer is the one that lies to them. And, and, you know, yeah, it's, it's a wicked system sometimes. So I'm glad you have Found a way. Now, are you— so you are co-packing it. You haven't created your own manufacturing facility yet. Um, I'm sure that's coming right in 5 years or something.

So maybe so. We're about to open, um, a Zebra headquarters and take over our own shipping just to improve the shipping experience for our customers. Um, nice. There's some room there, um, to get packages to our customers faster. So we're doing that, but, um, Yeah, it's been a very enlightening experience. And I think what most people don't know is that on your cosmetic ingredient label, and it might be the same with food, they don't have to tell you if there's an ingredient lower than 2%.

And so it's true, that's true with food as well.

So we, um, we disclose everything. I'm not trying to, you know, not disclose the under 2% ingredients. So sometimes people will say, well, you have a preservative in your toothpaste and this one doesn't. And I I don't know if you're— if the other one doesn't, because they don't have to tell you. So we have—

Yeah, that's an interesting point though. Sorry to interrupt you, but that's an interesting point because, because you're being so transparent, people are being informed of things that they may not even realize is in the product they're already using.

Exactly.

How are you navigating that? That kind of like, in a way, you're almost becoming both an educator And, uh, manufacture our product.

Yeah, it's difficult because, I mean, if you compare our label to some other labels, sometimes it actually might appear that, you know, we're, we're using a preservative versus they're not. Or, um, there's a lot of brands in the natural care space that aren't following, um, legal rules and not using what's called INCI names. So for example, if you see salt on an ingredient list and you see ours and it says sodium chloride, you're going to assume the one with the salt is cleaner. But no, we're just following the rules. We're trying to, you know, be completely above board in what we do. And it's the same ingredient, but it just, you know, sodium chloride doesn't sound as crunchy as salt. But we're the ones following the rules.

It's such a good point. Yeah. Well, well, kudos to you for getting the word out. And I'm so glad we were able to talk here to educate people on the quality of your product. And, and it's so great because the winner of Organuary is going to get some of your products. But where can people currently find your products? And where can they follow you on socials?

Yeah, so right now we're exclusively direct-to-consumer, www.yayzebra.com. So that's Y-A-Y-Z-E-B-R-A.com. And on Instagram, we are Zebra.US. And following us on Instagram is great because we try to post education here and there to try to help people navigate. Even if Zebra doesn't have the, the product, we, we want to make sure that all products— food, personal care, anything you use in your home Um, that you're making informed decisions on that.

Well, thank you for doing what you're doing, and I, I don't want to leave before I ask, so how, how is the health of your daughter and how is the health of your son at this point after all these years of these changes and, uh, that you've made?

Um, my daughter's doing great. Um, my son, he, you know, he's never been the same post-brain surgery. So that has had some really catastrophic effects on him and our family. And so, um, Zebra is more than just a, a company that I created. For me, it truly is a mission to try to help, um, just help ease that toxic burden on Americans and on their families, and hopefully, you know, provide products that never contribute to anyone walking the road that we have walked in my family.

Yeah, well, God bless you and thank you so much for going on this journey and, uh, and paving a new road for people because we need more companies like yours just to be fully transparent and, and really reeducate people on what is in the products that they're using. So thank you.

I appreciate that. And thank you for doing what you're doing. I am a Pluck customer, so I was super excited to meet you at AmFest. I absolutely love what you're doing, and we incorporate that in as as much food as we possibly can in our family.

Oh, thank you so much. Well, I've it it's great to be in such good company. So I appreciate you and all the sponsors of Organuary, and and thank you for everyone that joined us on this video. And make sure to leave a comment, and we look forward to finding the winner of Organuary 2025.

Yes, thank you so much.