Meet the makers

March is meet the makers month, and we wanted to kick off the month with a brief intro of who we are, what we are about, and why we are in business.

We are Steve and Barb Bloom, married for almost 45 years, and until 2010 we were average people that worked a 9 to 5 job, kept a house, garden and 2 cats, 1 dog. But in 2010 the economy paid us a visit. We both lost our career jobs in the height of the great recession and found it next to impossible to find a new employment opportunity. We dug deep, and took a risk to start a new business making cold processed natural soap. Our first attempt was a learning process, but we learned more, and created a great batch of gardeners soap- a minty fresh soap with corn meal embeds to add that scrubbing action. Customers came back asking for more and that is when we realized we had a product that the world might want.

Images in Bloom Studios LLC was born. Our first studio was our basement, with a few work benches, and shelves. We wrapped our soap on the dining room table, and stored our overflow supplies in our spare bedroom. As we grew the business was overwhelming our home, and we began to think of renting studio space somewhere. We searched, and searched for the right space that would be affordable. The space we found was part of a coop of 11 artists in the ArtCraft Building. It was a great space that we put to use quickly. But we outgrew that space, and we eventually rented out own 1100 square foot studio in the same buildng. We loved our large space. But 2 years ago we moved into our own space in the Twist Drill Building after we were told the Artcraft building was sold to the city of Cleveland.

Our studio is big enough for both of us to create, with a fabulous view of lake Erie and the runway for Burke Airport. Upon occasion we see the nesting pair of eagles flying over and the peregrine falcon makes appearances.