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EMS House of DeFrance http://www.emshouse.com Personal Pages (not always EMS related) Courtesy the EMS House of DeFrance http://www.defrance.org BY DEB GRUVER Jamie Tabor hopes to someday retire on Chicken Poop. Chicken Poop is the whimsical name of her all-natural lip balm, which she makes in a corner of the Fisch Haus, an artists cooperative on South Commerce. Tabor sells Chicken Poop at 15 stores in Wichita and across the country. Much of her business is coming from Chicago, driven in part by a mention in Daily Candy, an e-mail magazine of sorts about fashion, shopping and cultural events tailored to metropolitan areas. Tabor is a Jill of all trades. She is a hairdresser at the Simone Chickenbone Institute, her salon at the Fisch Haus. She also teaches Pilates. Chicken Poop started after a friend of Tabor's from beauty school took her to Sephora, a chain of makeup and skin care emporiums found in larger cities. There, Tabor spied a funky line of products that caught her eye. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I want to do this,' " she remembers. She started by making Good Gravy, a hair pomade. Then she thought an all-natural lip balm would be a good seller. She began making Chicken Poop -- from soy, jojoba oil, orange, lavender and beeswax -- in 2000. And the name Chicken Poop? It comes from a joke her grandfather used to tell her: "If you've got chapped lips, put some chicken poop on them and you won't lick them." Her husband, Eric Schmidt, helped her with the machine that makes Chicken Poop. The ingredients are melted and poured through a spout that Schmidt designed. Tabor buys the tubes for Chicken Poop from a company in Utah. Then she sticks a label on each tube and shrink-wraps it. Sales have steadily increased. Venus magazine featured Tabor and Chicken Poop in its summer issue under the headline "Potty Mouth." Within 24 hours of the mention in Daily Candy on Jan. 31, Tabor received Chicken Poop orders totaling $1,600 -- a lot for a product that sells for $4 each. "That's a whole lot of Chicken Poop," Tabor said. Tabor receives orders every day on her Web site, www.ilovechickenpoop.com. She advertises the product around town with a VW Beetle adorned with pink stars and the Chicken Poop logo. Love Box Co. recently made display boxes for Tabor, which is helping her pitch to retail stores. The boxes feature a 3-D chicken, and a slot in the back dispenses the tubes of lip balm. GreenAcres Natural Foods Market & Deli started stocking Chicken Poop this week. "One reason is because it's local," operations manager Chet Shelite said. "We try to support people around the area." But Shelite said the store also wanted to keep up with a hot product. "In Wichita, it's pretty well-known," he said. Orders are picking up enough for Tabor to considering hiring employees. She now dedicates about a third of her work life to Chicken Poop, which is a sole proprietorship. She says she can't stop doing hair because her clients would kill her. Schmidt, whose title is plant manager, dreams that he and Tabor will someday buy the warehouse next to the Fisch Haus to use as a manufacturing facility. Small-business experts say it's time to expand when owners can't keep up with orders themselves or quality is suffering. Tabor says she still can handle the company but would like to see it take off. She has her eye on a $50,000 machine that could make 50 to 60 tubes of Chicken Poop a minute. Tabor hopes to someday be in large chains such as Walgreens and Sephora. She has other products -- including hair and personal hygiene products -- that she has put on hold while she gets Chicken Poop established. She makes the other products on demand and hopes to offer the entire line in about a year. "We're trying to find venture capital," said Tabor, who also is five months pregnant. "I want it to be huge. I want Chicken Poop to be bigger than Burt's Bees," a product line that also includes lip balm. The
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