Chicken Poop proprietor Simone Chickenbone
photo by Gavin Peters
Potty Mouth
Issue #24
Balm guru Simone Chickenbone wants to lube your lips
By Joan Hiller
Published: June 1st, 2005 | 2:31pm
"My first venture trying to sell a product was when I made air fresheners out of pink Kleenex and yummy-smelling soap and lotion ... I must've been 4," recalls Kansas-based lip balm provocateur Simone Chickenbone (real name: Jamie Tabor).
While Chickenbone's products — most notably her signature sweet orange and jojoba oil-infused Chicken Poop Lip Balm — are much more sophisticated than her original childhood concoctions, the monikers she attaches to them retain the playfulness of the entrepreneurial dreams she fostered in her youth.
An antiquated cash register, carbon invoice sheets, rubber stamps, and everything necessary for a proper business was gifted to 6-year-old Jamie for playtime by her father, and she quickly invented The Pink Flamingo, her first virtual store. All childhood fantasies either die or morph into something greater, and in beauty school, Chickenbone met a makeup artist named Claudia who was to become her best friend and a constant source of encouragement. When Claudia took her to Sephora for the first time and Chickenbone spied Anna Sui's exquisite line of rose-adorned cosmetics and perfumes, she was aptly inspired. "I thought, 'This is it!’” she explains, adding that "I said then and there that by the time I was 25, I would have my own product line."
Today, via her Web site (ilovechickenpoop.com) and select retailers, Chickenbone's Chicken Poop Lip Balm is sold all over the globe. The name, of course, is as attention-getting as it is offensive to some retailers with traditionally higher price points, as Chickenbone laments. "I've had mean shop ladies turn their noses up at me, and even had a local store ask me to leave because it was disgusting. Those bitches."
Those bitches are bummed now, because Chickenbone's eight-product line — which also includes Good Gravey: It's The Balm, Kill it Dead (a deodorizing spray), Chicken Noodles: A Refreshening Spray, Garage Floor: A Dirty Fragrance, Chicken Soup: A Spicy Fragrance, and a signature Simone Chickenbone scent — is gaining popularity and garnering radiant press across the country. There's also Slick Chick: A Reflection Spray Great For Curly Curls, which is as killer as you'd think it'd be.
Chickenbone uses all-natural ingredients such as soybean oil, beeswax, and lavendar, prompted by her eco-conscious husband and the company's plant manager, Eric Schmidt. Watch out for her newest invention due out this year, a chicken-shaped balm dispenser that pops tubes of the good stuff right out of its bottom.
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