OUR STORY
THE SEARCH FOR SOMETHING REAL
THE SEARCH FOR SOMETHING REAL
A quest for truly pure skincare
How a woman's frustration with "clean" and "natural" products led to making her own.
When Clean Wasn't Clean Enough
For years, our founder, Nandi, cycled through product after product that promised "natural" and "clean" on the label. What she got instead was dried skin, clogged pores, and breakouts.
Every label promised to be “natural”, and claimed “clean”. None of them were. Finding truly clean, pure, and minimal-ingredient skincare in today's world seemed impossible.
The turning point came when a close friend was searching for a gentle, natural solution for her baby's irritated skin. The word that kept surfacing in their research was "tallow."
Problem was, all the tallow products she tried were too greasy, too heavily perfumed, and filled with filler oils and waxes that smothered the skin. Looking deeper into the ingredients of those products, she had a shocking realization: most "tallow" skincare on the market was not pure at all.
Many tallow products were cut with coconut oil, jojoba, olive oil, beeswax, and shea butter. Some were infused with synthetic fragrances, petroleum-based essential oils, and preservatives. These additions were potentially comedogenic, pore-clogging, and irritating. They were the exact things tallow skincare is supposed to avoid.
That is when Nandi knew: if she wanted something truly clean, she would have to make it herself.
The Obsession Phase
Nandi sourced pure, grass-fed, grass-finished, free-range suet from a small local farm and began rendering and refining it by hand in her own kitchen.
The early batches worked, but they were not perfect. Some were too firm, some were grainy. Nandi was not satisfied with "good enough." She wanted perfection! She kept adjusting temperatures, timing, and whipping speeds, developing the proprietary process that creates the signature finished texture we have today. It took countless test batches, whipping and re-whipping, sharing samples with friends, family, and neighbors, listening to feedback, and going back to the drawing board.
The Breakthrough
Eventually, she got it!
The result was silky, cloud-like, and melted effortlessly into the skin… And the first people to try it could not stop talking about it. Word spread and pretty soon everyone was asking for jars. What started as a personal quest became a calling.
Tallow & Things® began at the local New Smyrna Beach Farmers Market. It has since grown to multiple markets, a full online storefront, and a subscription offer.
Nandi and her husband Jason have built the brand from the ground up, maintaining direct ownership of every variable and a direct consumer feedback loop so they can always make their products better.
Still Made by Hand
As Tallow & Things® has grown, the one thing that has never changed is who makes it. The formula and production hasn't been handed off to a factory as demand has picked up. It has stayed exactly what it was at the start — something made carefully, by hand, by the same people who created it and their small tight-knit team.
That choice isn't the fastest, cheapest, or easiest one, and it never will be. Hand-making skincare in small batches takes more time, more expense, more attention, more effort, and more care than letting machines run by strangers take over. But fast, cheap, and easy was never the point. The point was making something pure enough to trust on their own skin, on the skin of people they love, and on yours.
So as the markets multiply and the orders grow, what holds steady is not who's in the room — it's the standard that every batch is held to. That standard started with the family, and it's the one thing that will never be handed off, no matter how the team grows around it.
Made by Our Family
Tallow & Things® isn't made on an assembly line. It's made by a family who oversees every batch.
Nandi leads the craft and the recipes, and Jason runs the business behind the scenes. Their sons help process the suet, work the market booths, and pack every order. Even Jason's mother is part of it, helping render and produce product. That's three generations, all answering to the same call and quality standard.
Because the founders and family oversee every batch, nothing goes out the door without someone who truly cares about it standing behind it. No shift change, no outsourced line, no anonymous step in between. It isn't the easiest way to work, but it's the way Tallow & Things® works. And you will always feel that same standard of care inside every jar that reaches you.
Simple by Design
What started in Nandi's kitchen as a personal quest has grown into something she never expected: a brand that thousands of customers now trust with their skin every single day.
And through all of it, one thing has never changed — Tallow & Things® is natural, clean, and simple.
Look around and you will find hundreds of products, each promising to solve a different problem, each requiring another product to make it work. Skincare has been turned into something confusing, expensive, and overwhelming, and most of it is unnecessary.
We don't believe in that approach. Tallow & Things® carries just a few products: a few simple face moisturizers, a body butter, and an occasional limited edition drop — on purpose!
When you use what nature intended and what your skin actually recognizes, you don’t need a complicated ten-step routine. You don’t need a different product for every concern. You just need pure ingredients, applied consistently, and your skin does the rest.
We keep it simple because simplicity works. And because you deserve skincare that fits into your life, not skincare that takes it over.
Our Mission
Most skincare is engineered. Ours is the opposite — 100% natural.
Our mission is to restore trust in what people put on their skin. We want to help you replace synthetic skincare with something the body actually understands — truly pure, biologically aligned skincare.
Nature already has the solution! We just render it, purify it, and put it in a jar, adding nothing unnecessary or that hasn't earned its place!
For us here at Tallow & Things® it’s about returning to the simplicity of ancestral wisdom with a mission to rejuvenate skin with something truly pure.
Add purity to your skincare routine.
Shop Tallow & Things and experience what truly pure skincare feels like.