009: Melba Seto - Owner of Bowness Soapworks Your Neck of the Woods

Part of what makes doing the show so much fun is all the interesting people that I get to talk to. It would be hard to find somebody more interesting than Melba Seto. Polyglot, altruist, survivalist, adventurer, not to mention businesswoman and maker of “adventure soap”. She just happens to be the first in what I hope to be a recurring feature on Your Neck of the Woods where we showcase and amplify local business owners. Melba is the owner and founder of Bowness Soapworks, as you might guess they sell homemade soap. It’s a business with its roots in Melba’s love of the outdoors hand an idea that sprung out of an Airbnb with some exceptional touches. When guests wanted to know about the soap, they got during their stay Melba had the idea to not only sell this soap but make all kinds of different scents and partner with other local businesses to create custom soap that they could sell.
This has grown into a business with dozens of distributors throughout Calgary, several partner businesses with custom soap and now a Soap Club, and unlike fight club we definitely want you to talk about Soap Club. This is a program where every month not only will you receive soap from Bowness Soapworks but goodies from various other businesses that have joined the Soap Club! I’ll have a link for this at the bottom of this description. Melba isn’t just building a community with roots in our Rocky Mountains that are part of the Bowness Soapworks logo, she is committed to giving back to her community as an avid blood donor and advocate for inclusion. So much so that we have our first offer in podcast history if you donate blood and show your proof of donation to Bowness Soapworks by March 4, you’ll receive a free bar of soap! Donating blood can help so many people let’s get out there is a community save some lives and get some free soap.
In the future, Melba even wants to offer survival skills courses along with her adventure soap to pass on the skills she learned in the cadets of the armed forces and has an avid outdoors person. Personally, this seems like a fantastic idea to me we’ve all seen through the pandemic how important the skills of being self-sufficient can be when times get tougher, how much we all learned about planting our own gardens, baking bread, [even with all her skills Melba hasn’t quite mastered this one apparently] and many other things we haven’t been used to doing especially living in a city like Calgary. The work gets tossed around a lot but this really was inspiring talking to someone who does so much right here in Your Neck of the Woods and is one of the reasons that such a great place to live!
Follow Bowness Soapworks @bownesssoapworks on social media to follow Melba’s adventures and see the adventure soap being made!
Join the Soap Club here: https://bownesssoapworks.com/pages/subscriptions 
book your appointment to give blood here: https://myaccount.blood.ca/en/donate?_gl=1*68jwt2*_ga*MjczMjkxNjIxLjE2NDQzNDE3NDQ.*_ga_YHMRKTXXVD*MTY0NDM0MTc0My4xLjAuMTY0NDM0MTc0My4w&_ga=2.262258373.837423881.1644341744-273291621.1644341744 
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