About Us - The Eco Lips Story

In the early 1990s, Andrea Danielson began brewing small batches of natural lip balm in her kitchen for her friends and family.  She took great care in handcrafting the balm and packaging it in small amber glass jars to preserve the freshness of the pure ingredients.  Andrea didn’t realize that by giving a sample of her natural lip creation to Steve Shriver, her life would be changed forever.

Having larger than average lips, Steve was continually searching for a better lip balm.  When Steve met Andrea in 1995, he immediately fell in love with the lip balm, and moments later he also fell in love with Andrea.  They were married in 1997 and Steve, a lifetime entrepreneur, quickly spent Andrea’s life savings on ingredients and packaging for the couple’s first product, Hemp Lip Buzz.

By 2003, Steve and Andrea had built a specialized private label natural body care company focusing on making high quality products for many other successful brands.  Their company rapidly became a leading natural body care manufacturer in the Natural Products industry.

Much of the growth of their business was due to their top sales representative and entrepreneur, Jim King.  Working out of his California office, he founded and grew a successful and environmentally friendly promotional products company called Access Eco.  He enjoyed the process of building other peoples' brands through promotional products, but something was missing.

Jim had a vision of creating a lip balm brand like no other. He became obsessed with lip balm!  Jim looked at every lip care brand currently on the market, buying them, one by one, until he had acquired over 200 different samples.  From petroleum-based lip care to natural brands, he packed all of these samples and flew to Iowa to meet with Steve about his dream.

Jim and Steve spent hours mulling over a 10-foot conference table layered with what would soon become their competition in the lip balm industry.  The goal was to create a brand image and an organic formula that would take market share from petroleum-based lip balm brands.

Voilà!  Eco Lips was born!  Jim and Steve swiftly brought the product to market and began raising awareness of the importance of pesticide-free organic products.

Today, Eco Lips organic lip balm is handcrafted in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  With the mission of satisfying the needs of every customer, Eco Lips has been first to market with several innovative organic lip care products and packages.  With environmental initiatives in place, a focused marketing and sales strategy, award winning packaging, and a relaxed, yet productive work environment, Eco Lips is making its way around the world, one set of lips at a time.