Monthly Archives: May 2015

KBShimmer Behind The Scenes Tour

Ever wonder if KBShimmer polishes are made by little elves in trees with magic dust, or if our products come out of a big factory in China?  Well, though we often come out of our place looking like we were sprinkled by Tink, KBShimmer is based right here in the USA, in Terre Haute, IN.  Most of our ingredients are sourced and made right here in the USA (including our nail polish base). And I (Christy) still personally make each soap bar, bottle of lotion, and mani shot that heads to your door; while my husband and staff help with scrubs, cuticle oils and the glitter nail polish.  Any products we offer that are not personally made by us (top coat, base coat, nail tools, etc) are carefully sourced or we had them custom designed/made for us!  No elves in trees involved.

Here is your ticket to the behind the scenes tour of the KBShimmer “factory”, I hope you enjoy!

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When you walk in our front door, you enter into our office areas.  Here we have Krishna’s desk, Krishna is not only our customer service guru, she handles our bookkeeping and is our Sister-In-Law.  She most often works from home now as she has a young baby.  My “photo studio” is also in the front room.

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Here my office.  Yes, I work in a state of disorganization!  I can’t help it.  My mind goes 100 miles per hour, so that means I rarely stay focused enough to put stuff away.  My desk is also always littered with polish prototypes.  These photos were taken back when we were finalizing Spring, back in October of 2014.

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Off the office area, we have a small kitchen area we use for curing soaps. Look at those empty shelves, we have a lot of soap to make!

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Next we have the shipping area.  This is Sami and Rhonda’s domain.  They handle all our shipping and are the reason you get your packages shipped crazy fast!

View from our 2nd floor looking down at the shipping area.

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Another shipping areas shot from above.  Hi Sami!

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A closer shot of the shipping table.  The shelves hold the polish and products ready for shipping. You can also see the post office totes we use to take packed orders to the post office.

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Bath and Body products ready for shipping, a pallet of wholesale boxes, and a small sink and area for cleaning supplies.

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Side shot of the shipping tables.  In front retail orders get packed, and the back, wholesale orders are packed there.  You can also see the orange pallet jack in the background.

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Closer look at our retail shipping set up.  Boxes are pre-taped by Sami and are ready for packing orders!

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Next we have the production area.  Our production area is split into two sides, with a table for pouring polish and labeling bath products in between.  The right side is our polish area, and the left is for bath and body. Hi Rhonda!

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We start with a shelf of empty bottles, jars for lotions, scrubs, etc, and brushes and caps for polish.

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Here is a closer look at the polish side.  You can see the red fire cabinets that we store polish base in, and a larger drum of polish base.  You can also see the table we mix on, some of our liquid color pigments, and the shelves where we house the glitters and powdered pigments.  We also have a few boxes with glitters that still need to be put away.

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This is a bit old, but at one point we did have all our glitter put away.  We have added two more shelves since then for glitter.  I may have a glitter problem 😉 Not the best video, but you get the idea.  If the video below does not show, you can follow this link: Youtube

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeqzPfAHYOI[/youtube]

Some of our glitters are mixes we pre-make, like the mix for Oh Spalt! ®

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Here are the gallon containers we use for mixing up polish, and the squirt bottles we use for filling bottles.

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Here is Rhonda capping bottles.  You can also see our filling machine we use for really large batches off to the right.

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Then is my area for bath and body production.  You can see our shelves with ingredients.  Here I also have buckets of lye mixed up for soap making as at time the soap shelves were really empty!

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Here I have raw ingredients for soaps, lotions, scrubs, etc.  Our big mixer for larger batches of scrubs.

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Here is our mixer again, and another production table for bath products and an oven.  You can also see a pallet of empty polish bottles here.

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Here is our dish washing station with clean dishes on racks.

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Here is our 2nd floor balcony.  We store shipping supplies up there, like packing peanuts.

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Our second floor has turned into a storage area, along with holding Jason’s office.

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Jason’s office area. Since he does a lot of our polish making, he is not up here often!

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Last we are back down to the shipping area, where we have our bay door for deliveries, and storage of shipping supplies.

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Are you still with us?  Good!  What behind the scenes tour is complete without demos of products being made?

Here is video of us mixing up Laugh Myself Lily: If you can’t see the video below, you can follow this link: Youtube

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VNF_GhdcL8[/youtube]

And here is our filling machine and capper in use.  We use the capper more then the filling machine, but both are fun to watch! If you can’t see the video below, you can follow this link: Youtube

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDPk0RqaxRo[/youtube]

I hope that you have enjoyed the behind the scenes tour of KBShimmer.  Now watch your step and exit to the right please.  And come back soon, we have enjoyed having you on this tour!