With more residents seeking to buy local products and more retailers selling them, K. Dee Howard has been increasingly busy making deliveries.
During a recent stopover at the Happenstance Coffee Pub in downtown Port Hope, where she dropped off a supply of hand sanitizer while grabbing a coffee, Howard spoke about Sootsoap Supply Co. Ltd., a company she co-founded and for which she serves as president.
The company specializes in natural personal care products, first manufacturing and distributing a detoxifying and deodorizing line, and now making hand sanitizer.
“Our products were initially developed to help protect our firefighters from cancer-causing toxin exposure and we have now released our premium hand sanitizer,” she said. “The hand sanitizer is kind of exploding a little bit. It’s getting a lot of attention and is being sold at some retailers in town, which is great to see.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Howard said her company worked to apply and received Health Canada approval for their pharmaceutical-grade hand sanitizer.
“We were hearing our customers’ frustrations with the availability of approved, high-quality, well-priced hand sanitizer and knew we could help,” she said. “We worked quickly with our lab to switch gears and develop a hand sanitizer that could not only help solve availability issues, but also address complaints with other products on the market.”
Sootsoap hand sanitizer gel not only kills bacteria with a 70 per cent pharmaceutical-grade ethyl alcohol formula, it will leave your hands silky soft thanks to its smooth consistency and moisturizing aloe and will keep the alcohol smell at bay with just a hint of peppermint, she said.