Lake Orion brothers treat hospital staff to homemade body butters
(FOX 2) - You wonder what lessons are the kids learning during this pandemic? For a young man in Lake Orion, Mich., he's learning a powerful lesson about the satisfaction in giving back.
On an oddly snowy day in April, boxes were unloaded from the back of an SUV in the Pontiac parking lot of St. Joseph Mercy Oakland. In these boxes were hundreds of dollars in body butter going inside to hospital workers with very dry hands.
And under the mask is 18-year-old Spencer Kelly, founder of the Expedition Soap Company, where he and his brother Grant sell soap and the very emollient body butter.
"It's made with organic grade A shea butter, cocoa butter, all sorts of oils that are meant to be very thick and skin-loving and moisturizing and skin softening, in ways I can't even describe. You have to experience that for yourself," Spencer says.
Nurse Jessica Torossian is a big fan.
"I love it. Their fragrances are really good and it's really soft and I use it like, every day," she says.
Spencer says Jessica, already a regular customer, reached out to them for help. She says the medical-grade soap hospital workers have been using can leave their hands cracked and bleeding and was wondering if Expedition Soap would be willing to donate some of their product.
And, the brothers obliged. They also set up a page where you can make a body butter donation to the hospital of your choosing.
"We are so, so grateful. I just can't wait to see the look on everyone's face when we bring this donation. It's really just going to help bring up the morale, keep everybody strong and together so that we can get through this," Jessica says.
Fittingly called Expedition Soap, this home business has taken Spencer on a life-changing journey. We first met him a couple of years ago and found his soap story fascinating.
Spencer's on the autism spectrum and has often found clever solutions to solve problems. He wanted to sell soap to repay his dad for a stolen bike, so Expedition Soap Company launched from his family's basement.
This pandemic has been challenging for Spencer, who's also a student at Oakland University.
"We have struggles. We can't go to any craft shows because everything is shut down due to this pandemic. However, thankfully being an online business is so, so helpful give the current circumstances," he says.
Now the brothers are realizing there's joy in selling their product - but there's even greater joy in donating it.
"All I can say is thank you so, so much," he says.
If you'd like to help the Kelly brothers on their mission to donate more body butter to hospitals, click here. You can choose how much to donate and where you want the lotion to go.