Bootstrapping a Consumer Brand: How Jaime Schmidt Built Schmidt’s Naturals and Sold to Unilever
Dear FoundHer...Real Founder Stories for Women Small Business Owners
Lindsay Pinchuk
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A jar of homemade deodorant at a Portland farmers market became a multimillion-dollar acquisition by Unilever seven years later, and the woman behind it never had a master plan.
On this episode of Dear FoundHer, host Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Jaime Schmidt, founder of Schmidt's Naturals, for one of those rare, unfiltered conversations about bootstrapping a consumer brand from a kitchen table with almost no money, no manufacturing experience, and a newborn at home. Jaime's path was not linear or polished. She was a social worker who moved across the country, got inspired by the Portland maker community, and started whipping up natural deodorant while pregnant because she wanted cleaner products and could not afford to buy them. That is where it all began.
What makes her story so useful for a first-time founder is how unglamorous the early days really were. Jaime hand-formulated everything using basic pantry ingredients, packed jars in a garage with a small team working off a changing table, and sold them on Etsy and at markets before she had a real website. Getting publicity came not from a PR firm but from sending samples to bloggers and YouTubers who were excited for new things to try. An early Today Show feature brought a flood of orders she was not ready for.
Transitioning from employee to founder meant learning wholesale, retail pricing, inventory forecasting, and supply chain on the fly as the brand moved into Whole Foods and beyond. Managing rapid growth brought its own pressure. Scaling rapidly through multiple manufacturing spaces while trying to protect product quality and stay cash-flow stable tested everything she had built.
Jaime's advice to women starting over or starting late? Stop talking yourself out of it. Find people who support you. And stop fixating on the end game. Just focus on the next real step in front of you. She did exactly that, and it was enough.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Jaime Schmidt on Building Schmidt’s Naturals From Scratch
03:16 How Schmidt’s Naturals Started at a Kitchen Table
06:09 Getting Publicity Through Bloggers, The Today Show, and Early Retail Wins
10:39 Bootstrapping Manufacturing and Scaling Into Major Retail Stores
13:08 Why Jaime Schmidt Sold Schmidt’s Naturals to Unilever
17:28 How to Scale a Consumer Brand Without Losing Your Values
22:20 Jaime Schmidt on Mentorship, Supermaker, and Investing After Exit
26:28 Business Advice for Women Starting Later and Becoming a Founder
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to another episode of your founder. I'm Lindsay Pinchuck, your host, and I have been using |
| 0:05.7 | today's guest product for years. Like genuinely, it's in my medicine cabinet right now. Jamie Schmidt is the |
| 0:11.9 | founder of Schmidt's naturals, and if you don't know her story, you are going to want to sit down for this one. |
| 0:17.7 | Jamie started making deodorant on her kitchen stove while she was pregnant. She sold it |
| 0:22.0 | at farmers markets in Portland, bootstrapped the entire thing, and seven years later, sold it |
| 0:27.4 | all to Unilever. No outside investors, no big marketing budget, just a really great product, |
| 0:34.5 | a whole lot of hustle, and an instinct for finding the right people to get |
| 0:38.1 | behind her brand. Today, she's going to walk us through all of it, how she built it, how she |
| 0:43.3 | scaled it, what almost broke her, and what she wishes she'd known sooner. This is the kind of founder's |
| 0:49.1 | story that reminds you that it really can start on your kitchen table. So let's get into it. |
| 0:55.5 | Welcome back to another episode of Dear Founder. I am so excited about today's guest because I have |
| 1:00.5 | been watching her story from afar for a very long time. I have been using her products for even |
| 1:06.4 | longer. The products of the company she founded even longer. Jamie Schmidt, who is the founder |
| 1:11.2 | of Schmidt's naturals, welcome to your founder. I am so excited to share your story. Thank you, |
| 1:15.7 | Lindsay. I'm excited to be here. So why don't you get us started? I would love for you to tell us |
| 1:20.8 | your story and tell us a little bit about how you founded Schmidt's naturals. Yeah, I'd love to. |
| 1:26.0 | Well, you and I were just talking before we started recording here about our upbringing. We both grew up in Michigan. I went to school at Michigan State, got a degree in business, but really no plan, you know, what I wanted to do with that degree. In fact, I was, I didn't think it was that cool, honestly. My friends were all majoring and exciting things like art and communications and I just chose a business |
| 1:44.8 | because I didn't know what to do. But it proves to be valuable later on in life. But I graduated |
| 1:50.0 | with that degree, ended up getting just a few small jobs after school trying to figure things out, |
| 1:55.0 | ended up working in social work just for something a little more meaningful through that experience. |
| 2:00.1 | I was still sort of lost and decided to pursue this artistic side of myself. |
| 2:05.8 | I was living in Portland, Oregon, and then made a big move cross country. |
... |
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