Today we’d like to introduce you to Alison Rojas Metcalfe.
Hi Alison, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Since about the age of 12, I remember telling my parents I wanted to live in New York. I grew up in Northern California for most of my childhood, so the idea of moving across the country seemed like a pretty big stretch to them, but for some reason, it felt possible for me. I always liked searching the outdoors and finding plants, insects, and animals to bring back home, most days wearing hand-me-downs from my cousin. I sometimes wonder if that’s why I still love vintage clothes today.
The closest I had gotten to living in the big city was visiting our family in Los Angeles, where my cousins lived. Through the tunnels of murals, restaurants along Olvera Street, and summer pool parties, I had an idea of what it was like to be part of the bustle. But I could see it in my mind’s eye that I wanted to be in the middle of another city, and I would work the next 8 years to get to that goal.
It started in high school; by then I had my first job with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, working in their summer program. Some days, I would be training to give museum tours for the new exhibits; other days I would set up a folded table and craft paper before the locals game with their kids for art projects. Eventually, I was commissioned to work as a muralist for their summer program. The first time I stepped into the studio, I knew I was a part of something special. A long hall passed the classrooms of the Ridley-Tree Center until you stepped to the doorway of the backspace that opened into a flood of natural light from all sides and directly above. It was a room out of a provincial storybook that overlooked bright green hedges that were as tall as the building. It was a safe space.
Once I graduated high school, I left for another city – San Francisco. The school days were so long. Since I was in a duel study program, I would spend my afternoons on campus for my undergrad classes before getting on a shuttle to spend the rest of the evening in Oakland, where I took my art classes with the rest of the art students. It was exhausting. I remember having my art history class at 9pm and fighting to stay awake to get my shuttle back home and starting homework around midnight. If it weren’t for the people, I wouldn’t have lasted those two years.
I decided if I was going to be serious about my passion, I had to be where the top creatives were living. It was time to go to New York. Without my parents knowing, and with the help of my design student friends, we skipped classes and built my portfolio to apply to Parsons School of Design while in my second year of college in San Francisco. I had a good friend who was studying photography, Mel, who volunteered her time to take all my photos. Back then, we had to put together slides – there was no such thing as an online portfolio. I think I took one full day off and two more half days to develop the slides and submit the portfolio. The hardest part was saving up $150 for the application fee because I didn’t have enough time in the day for a job. I had to save from what my parents would send me as grocery and art supply money.
Just a few weeks later, my roommate called to tell me I received a huge letter in the mail from Parsons. I ran back to the room with my boyfriend at the time, and we all looked at each other and knew I got in. I think I broke out in a cold sweat about that same time because now I had to tell my parents that I was about to move across the country and start the next semester back east. That was in 2000. Once I told my parents, they said there was no way I was going to move east during the middle of winter. So, they agreed to help me transfer for the Fall of 2001.
I worked and continued community college for that semester so I could shave off liberal arts requirements and make money before moving. We flew out in early September of 2001, and my mom moved me into the apartments in lower Manhattan. I was about to start my dream path. Not a week later, everything changed. Without my own cell phone, there were about two hours between what my family saw on the news and a phone call I made home to let them know I was ok. I had just started classes up at the campus in Times Square when the events happened, and even though out-of-state students were given priority to make calls, there just wasn’t enough landlines available. My Dad told me I had to come home. But I decided to stay. As a parent now, I don’t know what either of us were thinking. But my mom knew that if I said I wanted to do something, I was going to do it.
After school, I started working in fashion, which later brought me back to California. In 2006 I moved to San Diego to begin a new role with prAna as a designer, and that role led to an opportunity to build a team of developers, technical designers, and fabric specialists. After setting up Fair Trade, bluesign, and certified organic cotton programs, I began to learn more about social and environmental impact and how that is an important foundation to manufacturing. My grandparents worked in manufacturing in Los Angeles, so I knew in my heart how important it was to make sure the people who make the products had a voice.
In 2010, my son was born, and I worked another 5 years at the company before starting my own business. prAna had been sold to another company, and some restructuring began to take place I felt I needed time with my son and my family before starting over again. I had been working hard for so long that I wanted to make sure I made time to enjoy the people at home that I love so much. So, in 2015 I left to start my own business, Salud.
Salud encompasses so many parts of my life that I love and share with others. From my professional experience, I learned the importance of quality in the supply chain, inventory management, customer service, marketing, branding, operations, and networking. From my passions, I learned to always spend time around creatives – to support them with time, money, opportunity, and especially friendships so we continue to design for the future. My relationship with myself – to listen to my own boundaries and balance my energy and spend time just doing nothing instead of overbooking myself. Through my relationship with my husband, Ryan, I don’t operate in an echo chamber or a fantasy land instead, we laugh with each other each day or self-reflect on our tension points. Most importantly, this has allowed me the time with my son – to homeschool him beyond remote learning through the pandemic and to teach him sustainability, finance, nutrition, self-awareness, and self-love as a boy growing up in the world today.
I am about to launch a new program to extend Salud into the homes of more people across the US. Although we are currently in 50 retail stores from CA to New York, I want to be able to share the story with more people who may not live in a city center. So, we are creating a program called “Tastemakers” to guide women to build their own business at home so they can earn money without the stress of being apart from their family day to day. My goal is to travel and educate so we can enjoy these beautiful products while supporting family farms throughout the world. Beyond that, I hope to start building out studio spaces of our own so that the product is closer to our customers, like intimate distribution studios and showrooms.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
After I left my corporate job, it took just 6 weeks to launch Salud. I had about $30K budgeted to start with, which seems like a lot of money, but it goes pretty quickly. From label and packaging costs, branding, inventory, and trade shows, I could see the runway getting smaller and smaller. I took the biggest risk in February of 2020 when we attended our first trade show introducing the clean skin care collection at Indie Beauty Expo in Los Angeles. It was a premiere event that buyers flew in from Paris and Hong Kong to shop from the newest clean beauty and sustainable skincare brands in the market. I hired my mom, cousin, and a local friend to help me with sales, and we were nonstop. It was actually pretty incredible, and the enthusiasm for the product line was effervescent. We were expecting for the event to launch with pretty significant orders based on our initial day there. We would have never known that just a month later, everything would change.
There was a bright light. During that lockdown, we made over $20K from online orders alone through our relationship with Faire who matched us with dozens of spa and boutique owners who now relied on online ordering. Our word-of-mouth reviews were reaching all the way across to North Carolina, NYC, Chicago, and the Bahamas. I never did any online advertising. But we would soon reach another bump. Supply chain access came to a standstill. I was quickly backlogged with orders for wholesale while still awaiting my packaging or a key ingredient to arrive. Soon after, costs for everything went up and I was checking in with my customers on IG lives just to keep a pulse on expectations. To my surprise (or maybe not at all surprised) that’s when I got to see how incredible the Salud customers are! They are heart-led humans in every sense of the word and encouraged me to keep going.
As you know, we’re big fans of Salud. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
Salud was never about being just a business. I believe that when we make the decision to start a business, we bring in a specific energy to the mix. With Salud, the energy of integrity and quality, slow-making, connection to our farmland, connection to ourselves and to each other were born. I wanted to design Salud as a path forward for us to get out of this overly process, disconnected race to the bottom way of enjoying life. I want us to reach a higher ground together in all areas of our life.
Many people may not know that I am a reiki certified, homeopathic practitioner. While I don’t have a clinic, I do a lot of research and development in the areas of emotional balance, physical acuity, and mental awareness. I just started offering holistic sessions to explore more of this with others in their personal, family, and business life, which has been such a fulfilling next step on this journey. I am partnering this summer on a 6-week program for holistic alignment and action for those who are ready to co-create with the values I hold so dear.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I believe we are on the precipice of incredible awareness and innovation with clean beauty and skin care. Just last year, I launched our first clean beauty products that incorporate adaptogens, ceremonial grade tea, mineral cell salts, and homeopathy to lip balms. There is so much excitement and potential around beauty as body wellness and body consciousness with energetics. There is a sweet spot emerging that is less about stripping away your physical skin and instead using its function to bring even more nourishment within the body. I believe people will be moving further away from fillers and synthetics and enjoy superfoods like tallow and minerals to replenish the environment of the body, which will extend out into the planet.
Pricing:
- $22
- $78
Contact Info:
- Website: saludshoppe.com
- Instagram: saludshoppe
Image Credits
Danica Taylor
