Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Simkins.
Hi Vanessa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
When I was 11, I got Lyme disease; when I was 20, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Those events led me on a journey to get healthier – I started juicing as a first step. I fell in love with it and became an avid juicer as part of a healthy lifestyle. In 2011, I began AllAboutJuicing.com, a blog dedicated to sharing everything I learned about juicing with others. At this time, there were limited blogs on the internet, which was to my advantage. I fell in love with the business side of blogging & marketing. It took off and became a full-time endeavor for me. I worked with Harvard Common Press/Quarto Publishing on two paperback books and grew a large following. In 2018, I started VAS Exclusive, a glass juice & smoothie bottle line, because the wide-mouth glass bottles I knew juicers wanted didn’t exist on the market. Today, I spend the majority of my time on VAS Exclusive. We sell thousands of units, mainly the in-home juicer, each month via Amazon and our online shop. Amazon has allowed us to scale quickly, and I’m thankful for their model, which partners with 3rd party sellers. We also have a large grocery chain that uses our bottles for grab-and-go juices. We continue to develop new products I know juicers will enjoy – I love creating and launching them. We’ve obtained one patent, and I’m proud that we help reduce plastic waste as glass is a reusable, non-toxic & recyclable item.
We all face challenges, but would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road, but all the obstacles I’ve had have taught me so much and made me stronger. Things that I used to think were a big deal are nothing now. Because I started in the earlier days of the internet, coding and websites needed to be more manageable and manageable to work with. Blogs and design took a lot of work back then and were expensive- many tech issues with courses and emails. We’ve had so many challenges over the years, but more recently, the shipping/logistics situation during Covid was quite an issue. Container shipping & domestic shipping prices rose so much that it almost put us out of business. We had doubled our business during this time and decided to order more and stick through it. Today I’m glad we did because it was worth it, but it was a hard time.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about All About Juicing & VAS Exclusive?
All About Juicing’s overall goal is to educate and inspire others to live a healthy lifestyle and incorporate juicing into their life. Juicing is usually a gateway or first step into a healthier lifestyle, and I am so happy to be a part of that. VAS Exclusive builds off this by helping people use cleaner options for storage containers. I’ve inspired thousands of people to try juicing, or I might have helped with my recipes to get them to live healthier in a world with many unhealthy options. I get a lot of emails and messages on how a recipe or some information I shared helped them, and I still get teary-eyed when I read them. For VAS Exclusive, I’m super proud of starting small and building it to where it is today. I love the risk and thrill that comes along with entrepreneurship. I started with one style bottle that no one else had, and from there, we’ve brought out many others. Because I’ve been doing this for so long, I intuitively know what people want in this niche, and seeing it come to life is exciting. I am most proud of starting small and figuring out how to manufacture and sell glass products. It’s not an easy product line to sell as there can be a lot of breakage and picky customers who care about materials more than other markets. I am also proud that when people use our bottles, they reduce plastic waste and the harmful toxins that come with plastic products.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I like being an entrepreneur, growing the business, and making new products – as much as I do juicing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.AllAboutJuicing.com & www.VASExclusiveshop.com
- Instagram: allaboutjuicing
- Facebook: allaboutjuicing
- Youtube: allaboutjuicing
Image Credits
Madhumita Sathishkumar
