Quest to soothe skin bubbles up into a sudsy business

Correspondent photo / Nancilyn Gatta
Leslie Dunlap, owner of FattyCakes Soap Company in downtown Warren, stands in front of the display case of the variety of natural soaps she creates in her store. The Warren native and Bazetta resident makes natural soaps that help with eczema and other skin issues.

WARREN — Leslie Dunlap’s career paths involved helping people. She worked as a certified registered sterilization technician (CRST) and as a neuromuscular physical therapist, but the impetus to create FattyCakes Soap Company was to help herself.

“When I worked as a CRST, I did the surgical instrumentation, but my hands started breaking out in eczema. Maybe because of the lotions I was using or because I was wearing gloves and washing my hands 40 times a day. I would take off my gloves and my hands would be red and bleeding,” Dunlap said.

Dunlap sought medical advice, but ultimately she had to figure it out on her own.

“It was either sink or swim because I had to do something,” she said.

She researched online and discovered that soap was a leading irritant for eczema. So, she decided to create her own soap.

“It took five months to develop the formula. I tried the different soaps on myself until I found one that works,” Dunlap said.

She came up with the name FattyCakes as a play on words for a bar or cake of soap, also lard, which is a fat and a main ingredient in her product.

Dunlap admitted the name leads to some confusion.

“People sometimes think we are a bakery. I am thinking about making a signature cake that I would sell at the store,” she said.

The Warren native creates natural handmade soaps.

“It’s very simple oils and we use lard. That is one of the ingredients that we think is making the difference. It’s a cold process. It’s the way that the great-grannies made it back in the day. They used ash and fat,” Dunlap said.

Once she began creating batches of soap, she sold them at farmer’s markets and other locations. She found there was a need for her product, and people with other skin diseases found help with her soap.

“People would purchase a bar and then come back and tell me that it worked on other skin conditions such as psoriasis,” Dunlap said.

Her initial success led to her opening a store in downtown Warren on Courthouse Square.

“I opened it about 10 years ago. Warren is my hometown. I am friends with a lot of the people here. I can depend on the people that are here. A lot of them are from Warren. I just enjoy my day down here,” she said.

Dunlap encourages customers to create their own batch soap and uses social media contests to name new soaps. Her grandson has created two soaps of his own.

“I’d run a contest to name a bar and whoever I picked would win. We had Read Between the Limes and Smelly Vanelli for the vanilla patchouli. I just shipped out the soap to the girl that picked it, Read Between the Limes. That’s how we do that. She lives in Cleveland,” she said.

Dunlap enjoys meeting new people through her business, but she has an additional reason for continuing to sell FattyCakes soaps.

“I like being able to help people. That is my main reason. It is being able to help people so they don’t have to deal with the embarrassment. They don’t have to deal with the pain and the lack of answers like I did for the longest time,” she said.

Dunlap, who graduated from Warren G. Harding High School, lives in Bazetta Township with her husband and two children.