Photo Karen Graham. Walton Wood Farm founder Leslie Scott with Walton.
Walton Wood Farm founder Leslie Scott has something to prove and she’s not done yet. When she pitched her firm on the 11th season of the Dragon’s Den series, she received more offers than the program aired. One dragon offered to buy her out completely, but Leslie wasn’t interested because for her it’s not just about money.
When she launched her bath and beauty product line out of her farm house kitchen in 2014, she was looking to create a different kind of company. Of course it had to be a financial success, but Leslie had another agenda. She wanted to create a company with a culture she could be proud of, and she has done that in spades.
Leslie has come through the school of hard knocks. Finding herself a single Mom with little education and no support, she found a job in the car sales industry where she learned to sell. She also learned about horrible bosses, discriminating human resource practises and generally terrible working conditions, so when at 46 she had the chance to go to college, she studied Human Resource Management. She understood what human resource practices to avoid, but wanted to acquire some positive tools to make a workplace function well.
Her products are all produced with the highest ethical standards- cruelty free (her mascot is a pig, after all) paraben-free, and almost entirely natural, with the exception of a few product stabilizers that keep the products from disintegrating in hot warehouses. She has a customer support staff of nine who work alongside her in the farmhouse outside Bailiboro, and they have been carefully screened to ensure they can function well in this unstructured environment. All candidates go through a sophisticated personality test to filter out those who might not thrive in this culture built on initiative and problem solving.
It has been years since the products were manufactured at the farm, and the firm now offers more than 80 bath and beauty products, including a popular men’s line. Last month the business had to relocate to two new warehouses in Buffalo and Burlington to improve the logistics required by the growing sales volume across North America.
Walton Wood Farm products are sold locally at Oasis Boutique, which was Leslie’s first customer. Drop in and see where this thriving local business got its start. KG
