One woman’s dream becoming lucrative business even during personal hardships
Ali Perry-Hatch shows off her products at a local Whole Foods store. The products are plant-based and vegan friendly.
After starting her skin care product line in a 100-square-foot tree house her family lived in, Ali Perry-Hatch has grown so fast she is now producing out of an 11,000-square-foot warehouse in Springville.
Ali Perry-Hatch and her daughter in the Earth Harbor Naturals warehouse in Springville.
Ali Perry-Hatch shows off some of her Earth Harbor skin care line of nontoxic clean beauty products.
Ali Perry-Hatch with her three children and husband Shane Hatch in Springville.
The table in the 100-square-foot tree house where Earth Harbor was born.
The tree house that took six months for Shane Hatch to build housed not only a family but the beginnings of Earth Harbor Naturals, a growing multimillion-dollar business.
The logo for Earth Harbor products is pictured outside the company's production facility in Springville.
This undated photo shows a display of Earth Harbor products. The company was started in a tree house and has moved to an 11,000-square-foot warehouse in just three years.
Ali Perry-Hatch shows off one of her new Earth Harbor products at the company's headquarters in Springville.
Ali Perry-Hatch is no stranger to adversity. It is her inner hero that has not only saved her life, but guided her through an entrepreneurial dream and on a journey that has ended with a multi-million dollar business — Earth Harbor Naturals.
BeginningsHer story starts in her youth. Perry-Hatch grew up on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Her mother was Puerto Rican and lived below the poverty line, and her father is a Georgia native.
Perry-Hatch was instilled right away with a deep love of nature, the ocean and island life. As a child, she would even create natural “beauty” concoctions to share with friends and family, from marsh mud masks to sea salt sprays.
“We were all always rich with love and taught to put the greater good above ourselves,” Perry-Hatch said. “We were also taught to always do what is right and the importance of perfecting our talents while following our hearts. I hope all of this passion, finesse and hard work is what you can feel shine through when you enjoy Earth Harbor products, too.”
Following high school, she attended Georgia Tech University and received her Bachelor of Science in industrial design with an emphasis on humanitarian design.
During college, she worked with organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and International Poverty Action, and even started a social enterprise with fellow students that won national awards and grants. Perry-Hatch was also a Georgia Tech “Woman of Distinction” award finalist.
Her studies eventually took her east to the National University of Singapore where she began practicing herbalism.
Perry-Hatch’s desire to help improve communities led her to get her master’s in public health from Brigham Young University. While at BYU, she was awarded the Utah Public Health Association’s Emerging Leader Scholarship.
She spent her early career as a humanitarian engineer, specializing in global environmental health and toxicology — even spending a stint with Latter-Day Saint Charities.
Perry-Hatch has traveled the world researching how many toxins we are exposed to daily, how those synthetic chemicals negatively affect our health, and how to use beneficial natural alternatives instead. She has dedicated her life to making an impact with this knowledge.
The accidentWhile working in engineering at the Utah-based tech company Qualtrics, Perry-Hatch and her husband, Shane Hatch, chose to live in an off-the-grid treehouse they built. This was a major step in their journey to practice a mindful lifestyle.
A short time later, they were in a near-fatal car accident. Recovery was slow, painful and anxiety-ridden.
Perry-Hatch suffered from life-altering physical and mental injuries. A time came when healing seemed to completely stop, and she thought she would never regain her pre-accident identity.
At this time, she also found out she was pregnant with a miracle baby. The culmination of these life-altering experiences, Perry-Hatch said, was when she realized she had to take clean, natural living to the next level. She became more critical of what she was putting in, and on, her body, as well as its effects on the environment and humanity.
That’s when Perry-Hatch fell into a low-maintenance hobby — making holistic skin care.
“After my near-fatal car accident, my husband had to quit his job to take care of me, and quickly and resourcefully gathered clients to start his own digital marketing company,” Perry-Hatch said.
She also had to quit her job as an engineer at Qualtrics.
“We now had a kid, no insurance, so many medical bills, student loan payments and could barely make ends meet,” she said. “I remember feeling inspired — even through my intense healing process and stressful home life — to start perfecting formulas that I’d been making for years and marrying them with my knowledge of toxicology, environmental health and herbalism with my passion for sustainability and social good.
“I had a dream-seed sprouting inside of me that was Earth Harbor. Yet, I barely had enough money to buy the raw ingredients. … But I invested time and what little savings we had into Earth Harbor. My husband and myself happened to all have skill sets to pull it all together and make everything super legit and regulated right off the bat.”
Earth HarborPerry-Hatch’s biggest struggle with having a natural lifestyle was navigating false claims and greenwashing to find natural beauty products that lived up to her strict standards of being effective, ethical, purely natural, rooted in science and all-around indulgent — while not breaking the bank.
That’s when she started making her own products right out of her tiny treehouse kitchen — and Earth Harbor Naturals was born.
“About 80% of the products are skin care and 20% hair care — shampoo and conditioner,” Perry-Hatch said.
She continues to incorporate her health and engineering foundation into Earth Harbor, and her goal is to tie them together as closely as possible. She sees this as the best way to make her company evolve.
“Nonetheless, it was scary. I felt judged and misunderstood in a place that was so out of my comfort zone as I had no prior experience nor ‘ins’ with the beauty industry,” Perry-Hatch said.
Her comfort zone, she said, was being in the studio making Earth Harbor skin care gems; seeing how they changed people’s lives for the better; realizing all the possibility of social and environmental good that she could start using Earth Harbor for; and starting to see her family become safe and secure.
Perry-Hatch has even started working on an impact foundation to help fund, support and mentor women in the health, wellness and sustainability industries.
“We’re so excited for all that’s in store and for the empowerment of both people and the planet that Earth Harbor will always strive to foster,” said Brent Hatch, her father-in-law and co-worker.
Perry-Hatch is proud to say that Earth Harbor is an independently woman-owned, sustainable, natural beauty business that started three years ago using $2,000 that she worked hard to save during difficult times.
Earth Harbor is entirely grassroots with no funding, loans or prior independent wealth and has been profitable since day one at their first farmer’s market.
Earth Harbor now employs approximately 40 people. Just last year, they were still working out of a converted garage in their backyard. Since then, they’ve moved three times, the latest being into their new warehouse that is 11,000 square feet complete with offices, an in-house lab, in-line filling machines, a fulfillment center, a kid’s play center for working moms and plenty of warehouse shelving units.
Earth Harbor’s award-winning skin care products can be found in stores nationwide at Whole Foods Market stores as well as hundreds of boutiques and spas. Online, you can find Earth Harbor’s entire line at ASOS.com, as well as Amazon, Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and their own website, http://earthharbor.com. Earth Harbor can also be found online across Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.
The company has been featured in major publications such as Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Popsugar, Los Angeles Times and more.
According to Perry-Hatch, “There are many more exciting developments in the pipeline, too.”
Earth Harbor keeps their production as in-house as possible to provide local work opportunities. Staying in the community also allows them to meticulously control each step of their products’ life cycles — key for truly sustainable practices. Even 100% of their packaging suppliers are local, within a 50-mile radius of their studio.
Perry-Hatch said she believes in giving customers products that are also ethical, sustainable and scientific. They believe both individuals and the planet require this comprehensive approach for long-term health and beauty.
That’s why they also are the first beauty company to become certified carbon neutral and plastic negative, in addition to their partnership with 1% For The Planet to donate a portion of all revenue to nonprofits that save marine life and help solve the global water crisis.
All Earth Harbor products are also Leaping Bunny and PETA certified as being cruelty-free and vegan, and their packaging is 100% reusable, recyclable and low-waste — including using all glass packaging, post-consumer materials and upcycled ocean waste plastics.
They lovingly refer to all of their products as “self-care gems”, and you’ll never hear the word skin care “routine” because, according to Earth Harbor, they are skin care “rituals” that should impart self-love day in and day out upon their customers.