Good morning from Washington DC…

August 2, 2010

Surprise! I snuck up to Washington over the weekend to join my dear friends and colleagues Donna Maria Coles Johnson of the Indie Beauty Network, Leigh O’Donnell of the Handcrafted Soapmaker’s Guild, Kayla Fioravanti of Essential Wholesale and Anne-Marie Faiola of Brambleberry. What would compel five women to drop everything, book last minute plane tickets and hustle up to hot and humid DC?

HR5786 was introduced into Congress on July 20th under the guise of “protecting consumers”, this heavy-handed piece of legislation will, in actuality, punish consumers. And women especially. Thousands of your favorite cottage beauty companies will close if it passes. The soap shops and tiny beauty labs nationwide (predominantly owned by women and largely employing women) will shutter the doors, adding to the already dire unemployment lines. Only the multi-billion dollar, multinational companies will be able to afford the team of scientists needed to be compliant, so your product choices as a consumer will dwindle back down to those companies who mass produce, who lag behind in innovation and who have the massive legal budgets necessary to operate in that type of regulatory environment. The prices for all cosmetics (from your toothpaste to your shower gel and your eye shadow to your body scrub) will increase, as companies are saddled with both the hefty new fees this bill will levy and the layers and scientists needed to kick it all into action- and those charges will trickle right down to the consumer.

Sadly, none of this will bring us any closer to “safe cosmetics.” New lab testing and labeling requirements would mean that our ingredient decks read like a copy of War and Peace. Any trace contaminants found in the water we use will need to be declared on the label. So hundreds of contaminants found in parts-per-billion in your every day drinking water will now congest an ingredient label and scare you half to death. Is the water unsafe? No- you drink it very day. But you’ll be left with fold-out ingredient listings that are impossible to read- let alone make any sense of- and anything with potential carcinogens (think coffee and apples) could potentially be banned. Natural ingredients will be impacted the most- as natural ingredients naturally contain more “contaminants” than synthetic, lab-created chemicals. This bill will be an absolute disaster for natural personal care products. If you haven’t already signed the petition to voice your opposition to the bill, please do so now. Bella Lucce needs every client, every vendor, every competitor and every natural product lover to take a moment to take a stand.

Later today, Kayla, Leigh, Donna Maria, Anne Marie and I will be meeting with senior staffers in the offices of those original bill sponsors. We’re in DC to stand up for this industry, to defend natural products and the people whose passion it is to create them. We’re here to protect consumers who deserve better legislation and unfettered access to the safe cosmetics they already know and love. We need your support via Twitter, Facebook, and the official Oppose SCA website. Speak your truth, call your representatives, alert your customers…this is your chance to make a difference and your assistance is desperately needed.

We’d like to invite anyone close to the DC area to join us tonight for dinner. We promise an evening full of great networking, yummy food and an opportunity to discuss this legislation and how we can collectively impact it for the better. Dinner starts at 6pm and I hope to see you there…

Famous Luigi’s
1132 19th Street NW
Washington, DC

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