Press

In 38 years, we have gotten a lot of notice in the press. San Francisco Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Vegetarian Times, Health, Self, Natural Home, Platinum, Fitness, Organic Style, and Bay Area Parent have all mentioned or featured us. Here is a sampling of some of the best among them. If your publication or website would like to feature Body Time, call Betsy Platnick at 510.559.8361 (ext. 26).

Saving our Skin

"The booming new natural skincare industry is becoming increasingly sophisticated, inventive, artisanal, righteous, hard-selling, and eco-intelligent—all arguably because of its location by the Bay.

Call it the local lotion revolution. Chances are that when you open your medicine cabinet, a bunch of the skincare products staring back at you come from companies based within an hour’s drive. The Bay Area is now the mecca for a new type of beauty industry: locally sourced, carefully crafted, and with a list of ingredients you can actually understand and feel good about slathering on your skin.

The Bay Area’s roots in the natural skincare movement go back to at least 1970, when sisters-in-law Peggy Short and Jane Saunders were selling handmade soaps and perfumes out of a garage-bazaar in Berkeley. 'The bath and body industry hadn’t even been invented yet,' says Manda Heron, Short’s daughter and CEO of Body Time, as the business is now known (it sold its original name, the Body Shop, to the iconic U.K.-based company in 1987). 'There was really just Jergen's lotion in grocery marts and perfumes and makeup in the department stores,' Heron says.

…other companies remain committed to the idea that small is beautiful. 'Whenever you go big, you lose quality,' says Body Time’s Heron, whose empire consists of just three stores in the East Bay and one in San Anselmo. 'It’s the same with food. Could you imagine Chez Panisses all over the country?'"

—San Francisco Magazine, March 2010

 

Vitamins A, D and E Moisturizer

"'I think people would bathe in drums of this moisturizer if they could,' says Katie Cotterell, manager of the Body Time store in Rockridge, California. This pudding-thick cream debuted in 1973 at the family-run shop and has been a best-seller ever since. The reason? It has absolutely no scent (unless you add it yourself from the more than 60 perfume oils and 30 essential oils in the store), and it leaves behind a moisture barrier that fans say protects skin under the harshest conditions. It happens to be especially popular with nurses, who are prone to chapped skin because of constant hand-washing, Cotterell says. Eileen Tillman, a financial controller in San Francisco, has been using the moisturizer for more than 25 years. 'I was hooked after the first try. I have dry skin, and this keeps it hydrated for a full day, and I don't have to reapply,' she says. 'I have five daughters, and they won't use anything else, either. It's the perfect lotion.'"

—Allure Magazine, December 2009

 

Locally made body-care line

What girl who grew up here didn't at some time during her teenage years wear China Rain, that gorgeously unpretentious scent? Thirty-seven years ago, a pair of sisters-in-law started making the fine perfume oils and handcrafted soaps they couldn't find in most stores. They soon opened their own store, and back then, the Berkeley based product makers called themselves the Body Shop. But across the pond an English company with the same name was mushrooming. In the 1980s, it bought the rights to the name, and our Body Shop became Body Time. The new name didn't slow it down any; Body Time's loyal, multigenerational fan base still can't get enough of its rich massage lotions, and its super gentle calendula cleansing lotion is an eternal fave. Today, Body Time has shops in the East Bay, San Francisco, and San Anselmo, and it remains the place for basic beauty maintenance.

—San Francisco Magazine, July 2007

 

Editable East Bay explains how beauty products — including shampoo — can be icky for your hair.

We were listed as one of the ones to choose instead of these store brand, mass produced alternatives in the Spring 2008 issue.   >READ MORE

 

 

Time for another body?
There are body shops and there are Body Time shops

THE ORIGINAL Body Shop began as a 3x5-foot counter in a Berkeley garage that had been converted into a hippie bazaar. The creators, women who were looking for something interesting to do with their lives and had $500 to invest, were already in their 50s, the mothers of the very hippie girls who were their market.

They sold thick, gooey moisture lotion (still one oftheir best sellers), glycerine soap which customers cut from huge slabs and weighed, lotions and cream for 10 cents an ounce, and odorless bases which could be customized to your own personal scent by adding individual essential oils. Strawberry. Musk. Sandalwood. Patchouli.

The year was 1970. A time of anti-war protests, "Chicks up front," ironed hair, tie-dyes, wallto-wall denim and the pungent odor of marijuana smoke perfuming the atmosphere ... covered up by the equally mulchy aroma of patchouli...   >READ MORE

—San Francisco Chronicle, April 1998