Tierra Soap Raises The Bar

by KAREN PONZIO

For some, a bar of soap is a common household item that helps them get their body clean. For Tierra Soap Co., a bar of soap has become a fusion of art, wellness, and culture as well as a way to connect to earth, nature, and community.

Founded in 2021 by the husband-andwife team of Richard Ramos and Addy Reyes Ramos, the Hamden-based company has grown by leaps and bounds, from a hobby born during the 2020 Covid lockdown into a multidimensional and multifaceted provider of a variety of wellness products created with natural ingredients, and all with an eye on the greater good of New Haven County and beyond. Ramos, a math professor, and Reyes Ramos, an accountant, run the business from their home before and after their regular work hours while also raising two children. It can be considered a labor of love, but a love that extends to family, friends, and the earth itself, rooted in the couple’s work ethic and artistic leanings.

Reyes Ramos described her husband Richard as someone who as a child was “constantly coming up with ideas and things to do.” He came up with the formulas they are still using for their soaps. As far as her own childhood, she “always had that line of taking care of the environ- ment, taking care of your body,” she said, while being raised vegan and by a mother and a father who “both in the spiritual aspect and the whole-body aspect was conscious about the foods we ate at home and the products we used.”

The couple, who identify as Afro-Latino, also both had grandmothers who were herbalists and were told many stories over the years of how their own handmade goods “helped bring healing and wellness to others.”

The couple are both naturally inclined towards the arts. Both sing and make art, with Ramos also being a self-taught musician who plays at least six instruments and Reyes Ramos continuing to foster a love of photography since her Betsy Ross Magnet School days. The lockdown in 2020 led to both of them leaning into their artistic talents when they found themselves home more, and with more time on their hands.

“We started doing things that we just enjoy and doing things that we consume,” she said, which included Reyes Ramos starting a “massive” backyard garden as well as a blog, and Ramos making things like kombucha. But it was a trip to the Dominican Republic that planted the seed for this current business.

After Ramos’s father passed away, he traveled back to the land of his birth and connected with a sister he had never met who made her own soap. According to Reyes Ramos this “lights up a bulb in his mind.” He began researching different ways he could make his own version of homemade soap, watching videos and downloading books to figure out the method he would like best.

Once a blender and other supplies were purchased, Ramos began trying to make soap through what is known as the cold press method. As he started experimenting, he came up with three soaps: charcoal, turmeric oat milk and honey, and ol- ive and rosemary. Reyes Ramos became more involved as the soaps evolved. Her husband began asking her for ideas as their family began using them and other people becoming interested in what they were doing. She thought they should start “seasoning this up a little.”

“We’re going to have to create more variety,” she told him. “We have to make it look more appealing. We’re going to have to take advantage of [the fact that a]soap bar can literally hold almost anything, so I added that artful beauty.”

Reyes Ramos began playing with color, flower petals, slices of fruit and the peels, also putting the emphasis on “making the soap have a purpose and a meaning” beyond being an item used to clean oneself.

“I believe that people nowadays, we are buying things that make us feel connected to something, something that reminds us of places and things, so even the names that we give the soaps I want them to have meaning I want you to feel a connection somehow.”

For example, one of the bars from the Spring 2022 collection was called A New Day, and Reyes Ramos said it is associated with what the season means to her.

“It means a new beginning of life,” she said. It incorporates the scent of Japanese Read more by going to THE INNERCITY NEWS .COM