Georgia’s 2022 Small Business ROCK STARS: Creating, Growing, Changing Homes and Lives
A soap and spa products company whose team is “moms, not machines.” A cabinet door manufacturer whose founder started out making toys. A medical device business whose CEO hand-delivers its products to trauma hospitals.
Rinse Bath & Body, Eaglecraft Door, and Poriferous, Inc. are three of Georgia’s six 2022 Small Business ROCK STARS, recognized by the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) and the Georgia Economic Developers Association (GEDA) as outstanding, unique, and impactful small businesses in the state of Georgia.
In 2002, while working on the Supercross circuit, Heather Swanepoel was looking for a creative outlet, and she quickly discovered that knitting wasn’t it.
“When my mom and I took a class on making all-natural soap, I was hooked,” she says. “I gave my soap away to family and friends and when they started to ask how they could buy it, a lightbulb went off.”
During Rinse’s first year in business, it produced around a thousand bars of soap and four other products, relying mostly on word of mouth and craft shows for sales. In 2021, the company made more than 200,000 bars of soap – about 28 tons – and has diversified into over 20 different spa products. Rinse now sells directly to consumers and is in more than 950 stores nationwide. They have also sold in Disney properties and major retailers like Macy’s.
“We just learn as we go,” Swanepoel says. “Our growth has been organic. We’re constantly creating new products, mostly by trial-and-error, and putting new systems in place to keep growing.”
Rinse has grown out of its existing space four times, pioneering a retail / production model in downtown Monroe. Most recently, Rinse expanded its warehousing in 2019 by purchasing a vacant, 20,000-square-foot industrial building. Rinse’s success has also stimulated new stores downtown.
“The bulk of our products are still hand-made by our 31-person team, many of them local moms,” says Swanepoel.
Family is an important part of another Small Business ROCK STAR; in fact, Moultrie’s Eaglecraft Door is a family-owned and -operated company. Company founder Ronald Lewis took up woodworking in the 1970s. What began as a hobby building wooden toys became a company that today specializes in designing and building cabinet components: doors, drawer fronts, architectural panels, and moulding.
Ron started out building kitchen cabinets but realized that there was so much detail involved in manufacturing doors that we could specialize in those,” says Rebecca Lewis, who with husband Randy took over the business when Ron and Betty Lewis retired in 2003.
Eaglecraft employs 17 workers in six buildings. In 2021, they produced 43,874 doors and had $1.5 million in business. The company sells directly to cabinetmakers and contractors, primarily in a region that includes southern Georgia, northern Florida, and eastern Alabama.
We’re building the Eaglecraft brand in our communities,” says Lewis. “Quality is what sets us apart: every board we use gets looked at by someone. We hire people and train them to specialize in the area they have talent for. Local high schools and Southern Regional Technical College have been great resources, and so have initiatives by the local Chamber and economic development authority.
“It’s important that we have the right talent to meet our customers’ needs. We meet at my mother-in-law’s every Thursday night for dinner. We talk about the growing business and remember Ron, who passed in 2019. Relationships are so important, and our customers are like our family. Their success is our success,” she says.
Small Business ROCK STAR Poriferous, in Newnan, also builds structures – not for homes, as Eaglecraft does, but for people.
Poriferous specializes in porous, high-density polyethylene surgical implants that are used in more than 40 countries and throughout the U.S. to reconstruct traumatic, congenital, acquired, and aesthetic deformities. The material allows the patient’s own tissue to integrate, reducing infection and improving clinical performance.
“After I founded the company in 2012, we spent two years refining the manufacturing process,” says CEO Aaron Noble. “Material on the market then was brittle, difficult to cut and hard to suture, but we were able to solve those problems. We now have 11 patents and continue to grow our products.”
With just 20 employees, Poriferous’ Newnan facility makes around 3,000 implants a week. The company was already growing steadily by 40% each year, and Noble says it experienced a 140% annual increase in business during the pandemic.
“We develop relationships with surgeons around the world, partnering with them to learn what they need so we can provide the best possible product,” says Noble. “The surgeons are really our champions.”
Poriferous’ location in Georgia is key to its success, according to Noble, because it can reach anywhere in the world within two days. The company has expedited shipping agreements with carriers and Noble has even hand-carried the product overseas himself – in one case, twice within 24 hours. Closer to home, Poriferous’ location is a boon to hospitals like Grady and Emory.
“It’s humbling to produce something that changes a person’s life,” Noble says. “We see and hear from recipients daily, especially parents of child patients. We’re also actively involved in mission work and with the Wounded Warrior Project.”
The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s International Trade team has worked with Poriferous to expand its markets and recognized the company as the 2020 GLOBE “Exporter of the Year” winner for entering new international markets the previous year.
Poriferous was also awarded the 2021 President’s “E” Award for Exports by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The President’s “E” Award is the highest recognition any U.S. entity can receive for making a significant contribution to the expansion of U.S. exports. Poriferous, Rinse Bath & Body, and Eaglecraft Doors are all certified Georgia Made™ companies. Georgia Made is a GDEcD program that provides additional support in logistics, manufacturing, and marketing of products produced in Georgia.
The Georgia Small Business ROCK STARS program, overseen by GDEcD’s Small Business and Entrepreneur Office, salutes the risks, innovations, outreach, and impact of the state’s small businesses, as well as the reasons why these qualities abound in Georgia. Since its inception, the program has garnered more than 2,000 nominations and honored 33 small businesses as Small Business ROCK STARS.
The nominations for the 2023 Small Business ROCK STARS are now open! Nominate today!
About GDEcD
The Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) is the state’s sales and marketing arm, the lead agency for attracting new business investment, encouraging the expansion of existing industry and small businesses, locating new markets for Georgia products, attracting tourists to Georgia, and promoting the state as a destination for arts and location for film, music and digital entertainment projects, as well as planning and mobilizing state resources for economic development. Visit georgia.org for more information.