Tiber River, a bath-and-beauty business based in Winnipeg, has made Canada’s Growth 500 list several years running. The tally names the 500 fastest growing companies in the Great White North. Tiber River came in at the No. 193 in 2019. This reflects a five-year sales growth rate surge of 483%.
Tiber River was founded in 1999 by Adriana De Luca. At the time, she was working as a sales rep for photocopy machines. She said her job “bored her out of her mind.” She began searching for ways to make the great escape to a life of self-determined financial independence.
Old Italian Recipe Sparks a Start-Up
Inspired by her father who was into natural remedies, De Luca decided a good “side hustle” would be to make artisan soap in her basement. She believed she had something unique in an Old-World recipe held by her Italian grandmother for soap that used pig fat and zucchini.
Her first foray into soap making was an unqualified disaster. The seminal batch she whipped up exploded and sent fat, lye and zucchini gunk spewing throughout the once tidy environs of her basement.
A mere explosion did not stop Adriana De Luca, however. She cleaned up and tried again. She eventually achieved success and had some nifty artisan soap to sell to friends and neighbors. She put on house parties for that purpose, leveraging the selling models of established brands, such as Mary Kay and Amway.
Money Starts to Roll In
The extra cash she sought started to materialize. Convinced she had a market for her product, De Luca made the plunge and opened a brick-n-mortar location on Winnipeg’s Stafford Street. The business did well, but it soon began to feel like “just another job” to De Luca. She was not working from the comfort of her home and could not stay home with her two young children. Going to her shop for 10-12 hours a day felt a lot like going to any job.
A new strategy emerged from her friendship with Michelle LaLonde. She was the owner of a boutique that sold De Luca’s products. The two women opted to form a partnership in which LaLonde would handle the sales, marketing and branding lane while De Luca concentrated on product manufacturing and creative development.
New Brand, New Strategy and Some Backtracking
This was the birth of Tiber River. The two-woman team then established a series of salons that offered facials, manicures and more. It was also a place where products could be sold retail. The primary strategy was to create a franchise model for this hybrid salon-retail operation — but it was an approach De Luva and Lalande soon abandoned. That was after they discovered how much work, red tape, bureaucracy and additional capital they would need to pour into a franchising project.
Thus, the ladies returned to the home-party model. That went well enough until the digital world began to eat their lunch. The fact is, home-party selling has given way to virtual groups, online newsletters, social media marketing and other digital-oriented strategies. De Luca and LaLonde embraced the digital trend.
The result has been an unqualified success for Tiber River
