Growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, Jessica Iclisoy recalls embracing the "kookiness" of California, then better known for lava lamps, gurus and sprouts – lots of crunchy sprouts. "We were the first to ‘avocado toast,’" she laughs. "We were the first to ‘quinoa.’" By the time she had her first child in 1990, she was firmly committed to the West Coast's new trend of "organic" living… starting, of course, with the pricey baby shampoo at her local health-food store. Like a lot of new moms, "I was happy to pay that extra cost for the health of my newborn."

But as it turns out, what she was looking for — an organic, sustainable, and above all, safe baby-care shampoo – wasn't actually on the market yet. On a whim, Iclisoy, then just 22, compared the ingredients of the "all-natural" shampoo with a conventional (big-corporation-made) baby shampoo. Keep in mind, this was before Google. "I was at the library a lot," she recalls, and randomly spotted a cosmetic chemical dictionary during one visit. She took it home. "I was feeling so good about my choices," she remembers – until she did the research. "Lo and behold, the ingredients were exactly the same. The only difference was the marketing."

That discovery changed everything. Angry at the deception, and concerned about carcinogens on her new son's skin, Iclisoy began intensive research that eventually became a company – California Baby – named for her "crazy and weird and kooky" homestate. Today, the 55-employee company makes over 200 baby products at its own FDA-registered, organic-certified manufacturing facility in Los Angeles, sourcing many of its ingredients from its own 100-acre farm in Central California. While she doesn't disclose revenues, Forbes has valued the brand as high as $330 million. Iclisoy, who launched California Baby in 1995 with a $2,000 loan from her mother, remains the sole owner.

To hear Iclisoy tell it, very little has changed about her attitude or borderline-obsessive approach since that day in the '90s when she picked up that chemical dictionary. "The thing that really drove me to develop California Baby -- I was not starting a business," she says. "This was investigation." When she took a deep dive into the ingredients in shampoos, she found sulfates, parabens and synthetic fragrances, "three really, really nasty things."

Sulfates, used by the Navy to degrease engine parts, irritate skin and eyes. Parabens, used as preservatives, have been found in breast tumors. And synthetic fragrance, considered a protected trade secret? "It's in everything," she says, including candles and food. "You're walking through the mall and you smell those donuts? That's synthetic fragrance." When she looked up synthetic fragrance in the chemical dictionary, "it said 'known hormone disruptor,'" she says.

That got her motivated to find a solution – she still had a newborn, after all, and he still needed some safe shampoo. "A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. For me, I couldn't go back," she says. "You can't unknow these things."

So Iclisoy, who didn't have a science background – her previous job had been working for fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa – went to another library, this time at the University of California, Los Angeles. "I talked to the librarian - really, your librarian is your best friend," she says. "I was like, 'I need to find an alternative to sodium lauryl sulfate.'" The librarian pointed her in the direction of the trade periodicals for the skincare industry.

There, Iclisoy read about a mild ingredient called decyl polyglucose, developed in Germany that was "under the radar" as many mass manufacturers found it difficult to work with. So she called up a lab in New Jersey that specialized in it. "The chemist was so excited," she says, "because nobody really wanted to take that time to figure out how to use it." They struck up a relationship, faxing back and forth, and over the course of three years, Iclisoy used her kitchen stove to develop a non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, non-allergenic, natural shampoo.

Encouraged by friends to sell it, Iclisoy next researched packaging options – and landed on a square-shaped bottle with a heavy pump. “Because I’m thinking, I’m a mom – I got a baby in one hand – I could do everything with one hand,” she says. “This is a good stable bottle.” A male business advisor told her “that’s not going to work.” But Iclisoy felt she knew her customer. “I would give it to my girlfriends with babies, [and] they’d go, ‘Oh my God, thank you.'”

Iclisoy began selling California Baby shampoo at her local health food store, Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Market, which was later acquired by Whole Foods. “For the first eight years, I was the demo girl at the end of the aisle,” she says, persuading moms (successfully) to spend $15.75 on a bottle. “I had one store, and then one store turned into two and three,” she says. “I was just hustling.”

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