09/25/2026
This is going to be a long post, so please stick with me here.
Almost exactly 1 year ago today, I made the impossible decision to turn off our website to US orders. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing tariffs being imposed on US orders once again. I am again left with no choice but to shut off US orders again - this time with no clear or hopeful path forward on opening back up to US orders. If you have a pending order and you're from the US, we will be in touch within the coming days with your options.
This is a tremendous hit to my business. Our US exports account for 30-50% of our business depending on the time of year. I have spent over half a decade building up this very sales channel. I did everything right - market validation studies, tradeshows, US retailers - the works. I know what you’re thinking - why not just expand to a new market? I wish it was that easy. Expanding into new markets requires tremendous amounts of time, resources and funds. It can cost upwards of $6000+ per sku just to be able to legally export a one new product to somewhere like Europe - that’s not considering logistical challenges like shipping, time difference and doesn’t even touch the cost of reaching the actual customers to let them know you exist.
This hit comes after an extraordinarily difficult past 2 and a half years. For those that don’t know, in the spring of 2024 I was placed on bed rest while pregnant with a beautiful surrogate baby. While on bed rest, my two amazing employees, a Mother/Daughter duo kept everything going at Upfront, while I focused on keeping sweet surro baby healthy and safe. Surro baby was born August 16th, 2024 and returned to France with her Dads in early September 2024. Meer days after they returned home, just as I was preparing to return to work the following Monday, our team suffered an unimaginable tragedy. One of our employees was involved in an ATV accident and tragically passed away a week later. The weeks and months that followed are honestly a blur, navigating grief while running a business wreaked serious havoc on my mental health. I tried desperately to focus just enough on keeping the wheels turning and had nothing left to give, to keep it growing. My husband Troy stepped in fulltime (while maintaining his own job), often spending his entire 4 days off helping me make shampoo, pack orders and do all the other things behind the scenes. He could often be found there before and after work too, along with our kids - doing everything we could as a family to keep it going while all simultaneously navigating grief.
In this time, and the years leading up to it I often sacrificed my own mental health to keep things going. I could have and probably should have, called it quits many times, but I didn’t. I missed our kids' birthdays, big moments and so much more in those first years of Upfront, to build something bigger. Something that someday our kids could look back on and be proud of. It hasn’t all been bad, we had had so many wins with Upfront over the years.
I’ve attended tradeshows in New York city, Vancouver and Toronto to name a few - even travelled to Atlanta with my father to attend a Greener Manufacturing tradeshow to learn how I could build Upfront in a sustainable way. At our peak, our bars were sold in over 600+ stores across North America. We’ve created jobs right here in our community of Nackawic. We’ve donated over $25 000 back into our local communities, with a substantial portion of that being right in Nackawic. Over the years our Upfront Give Back program has put Christmas gifts under the trees for over 700+ children. We’ve done beach clean-ups. We’ve diverted over 1 million plastic bottles from our landfills. Upfront is and always has been deeply rooted in the community and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My husband Troy has supported Upfront from Day 1, far before it was ever Upfront - back in the Handmade by Alicia days when I lost my own job as the Director of Client Services at a local homecare agency in Nackawic. With a baby at home and one on the way and facing my own career uncertainty, Troy encouraged me to go all in and make a go of Handmade by Alicia. Our oldest son was suffering from eczema and irritation on his scalp, which was only made worse by any shampoos we tried. In our small kitchen in Temperance Vale, what would Upfront Cosmetics was born, out of a need for shampoo that worked for our son and out of a need to find something I truly loved doing again. Troy has single handedly held our household up while I’ve gone all in for years at building Upfront. He held me while I cried and told him I couldn’t do it anymore. In the days, weeks and months that my mental health has been at lows, he’s stepped in with no questions asked to help Upfront keep going. He happily financially supported our family (and Upfront in those early days) because he truly saw the vision of what I was building.
Troy can often be found on his days off, after his days shift, before and in between his night shifts at the shop - helping Angie & I make shampoo, helping get orders shipped out, unpacking pallets in the rain and snow, trouble shooting problems I didn’t even think of, hauling me and my things all over Canada to shows, driving me to all corners of NB to retrieve supply orders that I inevitably waited *just a little too long* to order - all with a smile and oftentimes with little to no sleep.
Last week, our worlds (and so many others) shattered when Troy and over 200 other employees received the devastating news that the mill he works at would be closing, on November 4th. For those that aren’t from the area, the mill is one of New Brunswick largest private sector employers and the effects of its closing will be devastating to our small community and reach far beyond the direct job loss. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time our community has faced this devastating news. Back in 2004, when I was just 10 years old - the same age Eli turned the day we found out the mill was closing - our community was struck with the same devastating news we received last week. This isn't and wasn't simply one business closing, the domino effect is catastrophic - families were forced to move west for work, families lost their homes, other local businesses suffered and some didn’t make it. Our community has weathered this storm once before and I’m hopeful we’ll weather it once again.
I’m not ready to call it quits with Upfront just yet, but Troy is the main provider for our family. I find myself facing the perfect storm, if you will - decreased sales, closing off US orders once again and losing the sole financial provider for our household all while Upfront still has bills to pay and so does our household. More than anything we need the financial leeway for Troy to be able to find work that doesn’t force us to move. I don’t want to leave the very community I’ve spent nearly a decade building Upfront in. I’m not asking for a handout. I am asking for help though. Please help me keep Upfront alive. Help me give our boys something to look back on where they’re proud that mommy gave it her all and worked really hard to keep Upfront and our family right where they belong, in Nackawic. Realistically, to make this work and not throw in the towel, we need to sell an additional 500-600 bars/month from now until Dec 31st and maintain an additional 300-350 bars a month in the new year.
Here’s where you come in. If you’ve been thinking about making the switch to solid shampoo bars, if you’ve been needing to stock up, if you used to be a faithful user, if you’re looking for stocking stuffers or teachers gifts - now is the time. If you can’t buy a bar, I get it. Life has gotten really expensive but if you can’t buy a bar - can I ask that you share this post? Tag a friend who may buy a bar. Leave a review if you're an avid Upfront user - it all helps! Not local? That’s not a problem - we ship Canada wide and we have retailers too! Maybe you know a store you’d love to see Upfront bars in - let them know!
If you’ve stuck with me and read this far, thank you 💕
