Every day, twice a day, Sophie and Winnie are milked. They’re goats. We found them not on a rural Michigan farm, but in Pontiac, off Orchard Lake Road, on the campus of Goldner Walsh Gardner and Home. It’s here where Amy McIntire runs her company called City Girls Soap. And the goats milk, a key ingredient in her natural lotion, soaps and laundry detergent.
“The cream makes it more moisturizing and it’s also full of vitamins,” Amy explains. “We’re getting about 15 pounds of milk a day that we use in soap and the lotion.”
The company’s tagline is “Milked in Michigan, Made in Michigan.”
Amy’s daughter is lactose intolerant. Five years ago, Amy and her husband were buying goat’s milk.
“And we had been driving an hour to get it, to make ice cream and cheese for our own consumption. And I used to jazzercize, and I created a spreadsheet, and told my husband that if I dropped out of workout that we could afford to buy a goat.”
And that’s what they did. Winnie was their first goat. Amy and her husband wanted to use Winnie for a business…
“When we knew we couldn’t do a dairy, because it’s cost prohibitive, we started making soap. And we gave it away our first year, and when the feedback was good, we said, let’s start a business.”
City Girls Soap was born. More goats came with the increasing sales of the all –natural products.
“And in 2012, we got picked up by Westborn markets, and started selling at the Eastern market, and we got into Whole Foods.”
And she said it’s just taken off from there. Their sales have about doubled each year. This year she expects to do 65 thousand dollars in sales.
City Girls Soap recently celebrated the birth of 6 new baby goats. Two are female and will eventually be used to provide more milk, but the males will play a different role. It’s the next phase of Amy’s business. Goats love to chew, so…
“When they’re old enough, the males are going to do goatscaping,” she explains. “So they’re going to go to vacant lots, blighted properties and city parks, and private homes.”
You can call all her goats her company employees. They work hard, helping her provide all-natural products… and a little weed control... and that’s why we say Mom’s a Genius.
