The secret of success for Texas’ In the Weeds Natural Skin Care? Taking life’s bitter lemons and making them sweet. Learn more about Lika Torline and her company.
Story by Dawn Robinette
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
That classic John Lennon song lyric fits how Lika Torline founded In The Weeds Natural Skin Care.
And, golly, doesn’t it resonate with what we’re all facing now in the wake of COVID-19? Life is moving forward now, with no regard for plans or calendars.
Yet, as Lika’s experience proves, even when things don’t go as planned, something better can happen.
And, in Lika’s case, that something better began with her Dollface Organic Face Scrub, the award-winning best seller that led Lika to launch In the Weeds.
A curious turn of events
Dollface – an exfoliant/mask/light moisturizer that delivers an assortment of skin care benefits to combat a combination of concerns including acne, acne scars, sunspots and age spots – started out as a class project.
And it was made for an esthetician’s course Lika wouldn’t have taken were it not for a workplace injury.
Plus, that injury?
It might not have happened if Lika’d been able to find a job in the field for which she’d trained in college: interior design.
Got all that?
Frankly, you don’t have to follow too closely the narrative of how all this happened, however, to see the key takeaway: each seeming misstep was actually a redirection.
Today, her San Antonio-based company specializes in crafting all-natural skin care and aromatherapeutic products made with therapeutic grade essential oils, handcrafted by Lika, now a fully licensed esthetician.
Growing a company
According to Lika, the class project became something friends kept requesting.
She’d begun selling Dollface at local markets when she realized she needed to formally start a business. Of course, as with any young company, one needs not only customers but also capital. In another lucky turn, Lika earned the McAllen Chamber of Commerce’s 2013 Innovator Entrepreneur Grant, which helped her grow her website.
As is spelled out on her company’s Facebook page, more accolades soon followed. In 2015, her company was recognized as “Best of the City” in Beauty/Cosmetics by San Antonio Magazine, and she’s had her work highlighted at New York’s prestigious Fashion Week.
Her current product line includes face and body products, including an infused hard lotion stick, Purple Reign, that is dry skin’s best friend and a must for sandal season.
Every product is handmade at Lika’s San Antonio studio with all natural ingredients, including 100 percent therapeutic grade essential oils.
It’s easy to experience nature at work in the products:
- See the lemon slices and lavender buds floating in LOL Body Scrub
- Spot the ground coffee beans in Bump N Grind Body Scrub, which are guaranteed to wake you up
- Smell the intoxicating scent of Thieves oil in Medicine Man Salve
- Feel the non-greasy bug repellent that smells so nice you want to wear even when you don’t need it (ak.a. the Buzzkill Stick)
In the Weeds: What’s in a name
A firm believer in honesty and integrity in both business and beauty care products, Lika also puts an emphasis on using natural, local ingredients.
For instance, those lemons she now turns into a little bit of beauty heaven? They’re Texas born and bred in the Rio Grande Valley, then hand processed for In The Weeds’ products.
The cheery, tongue-in-cheek product names fit the brand’s warm, honest vibes. In fact, the company’s name came from the fact that Lika was indeed once lost in the weeds.
“We’re all in the weeds in some way. Where I am today came from one of the worst things I could imagine,” she said. “I was so busy mourning the loss of the life I thought I wanted, I was in the weeds. But it turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened. This is where I’m meant to be.”
Maybe we all need to see life’s lemons as opportunities?
And to enjoy a little Dollface, too.
An award-winning writer, communications expert and military spouse who enjoys unearthing new discoveries and revisiting old favorites in her adopted hometown of San Antonio, Dawn Robinette loves to tell stories. You can follow communications work at Tale to Tell Communications and read more of her musings at Alamo City Moms, Rio Magazine, and Texas Lifestyle Magazine.
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