unstoppable force good S

adie Bowler got the idea to change the narrative of the health and beauty industry while she was standing in a grocery store aisle with her dad. They were buying a few personal-care essentials for an upcoming

“My dad held up these two bottles of shampoo and said, ‘Do I want touchable softness or all-day shine?’” Sadie recalled. “It was funny when it was applied to him, but it wasn’t as funny when it was applied to me. I was just a 15-year-old girl trying to figure out who I was going to be.”

The experience stuck and on that camping trip Sadie, her dad, and her older sister, Abby, started brainstorming what a personal care brand that spoke to teenage girls would actually look like. Sadie was already a hair expert – she’d had her own hairstyling business since she was 11 – and she’d never found a brand that felt like it was

“Just being immersed in the beauty and personal care industry at such a young age, I realized I was their ideal customer, and they weren’t speaking to me at all,” Sadie said. “These brands and these messages were simplifying

As they brainstormed a new kind of personal care brand on their camping trip, that was the first thing Sadie and Abby wanted to change. How would life be different for girls like them if they didn’t spend so much of their brain power and energy on their looks?

“We think the more powerful message is to take the focus off looks entirely,” Abby said. “We think the world doesn’t need you for how you look. They need you for what you do and how you

By the end of the trip, Sadie and Abby had conceptualized their first product, a shampoo called The Adventurer, designed for girls like them doing exactly what they were doing.

“We walked away from that trip sketching bottles and writing mottos,” Abby said. “We were so bought in to the idea.”

A few weeks later, their dad challenged the sisters to make their idea a reality. An entrepreneur himself, his experience bringing his own business ideas to life was a big part of the Bowler family culture — and if their dad thought they had an idea worthy of a business, Sadie and Abby believed him.

So right there, at the kitchen table, SadieB Personal Care was born.

SadieB is a girl-founded, -led, and -operated personal care brand that’s about who girls are, not how they look. They offer shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and body spray in four different lines, each inspired by girls they know and love.

The Adventurer line came to life on the camping trip. The Creator line was inspired by Sadie and Abby’s younger sister, Annie, who loves doing art, and the idea for the Athlete line came from Abby’s experience as a competitive high school swimmer. The Go-Getter line was created with other academically minded, highly motivated girls in mind.

After a lot of time spent carefully designing bottles, refining branding, and testing product formulas, SadieB officially launched on May 19, 2022. By the end of that year, the sisters had processed more than 220 orders and brought in $10,000 in revenue. They operate out of an office at Lassonde Studios, where Sadie also lives as a sophomore at the David Eccles School of Business. Abby is studying business at Brigham Young University.

While SadieB aims to provide more practical beauty and personal care products for Gen Z girls, the mission of the company is much broader than that. Instead of selling girls a message that they need to change how they look, they are hoping to remind girls of all the incredible things they can do.

“It’s not, ‘I don’t want to look nice anymore,’ but more about helping people find their interests and reach their goals,” Abby said. Sadie agrees.

“Shampoo isn’t going to change their life, but changing how they feel about themselves will change their lives,” she said. “So, changing that dialogue is really our mission.”

“That’s how we keep girls at the center of the brand,” Sadie said. “It makes sense when you look up who’s running these big, global brands and its middle-aged men. Of course they’re not speaking to us.”

With the company successfully launched, Sadie and Abby are already thinking about the next phase of impact they can make. They are refining a picture of their ideal, converting customer, and developing their next product lines. They are also working on ways to make their product –currently sold on their website – more accessible through partnerships with large retail chains.

Simply put, Sadie and Abby want SadieB to be the #1, go-to brand for Gen Z girls. But one thing that will never change no matter how the company grows is the core mission: to empower every girl, everywhere.

“It’s not just self-care and face masks. You need to take care of yourself because you are capable of so much. Girls can accomplish so much,” Sadie said. “Our company mission is to empower every girl to be an unstoppable force for good.” ■

SadieB is also a company that practices what they preach. The company’s Instagram account, @sadieb.co, features regular content from the “SadieB therapist,” a mental health professional who shares tips about common concerns facing Gen Z girls such as dealing with anxiety at school or navigating difficult situations with friends. SadieB also has an ongoing partnership with Girl Up, a UN-backed organization working to develop girls into leaders all over the world.

And when Sadie and Abby say they have a company led and run by girls, that is exactly what they mean. Every position at the company, from the sisters in the C-suite to marketing to accounting, is held by a girl just like them, with a board of local business owners and leaders offering guidance and advice. It helps even the playing field for women and girls who are often shut out of these kinds of professional experiences, especially early in their careers, and it also helps ensure the brand stays true to the customers its designed to serve.