Angie Flickinger, owner of Waterbody, displays a block of soap last Friday that she will cut into small bars for sale. Her workshop and storefront are on Shakes Street, next to the laundromat.
The owner of a Wrangell company that makes body care products learned by a text that she had won the grand prize at a state competition for commercial goods made or derived from Alaska seafood.
She had just returned to town from a trade show in New York City.
Waterbody, owned by Angie Flickinger, won the grand prize for its Deep Blue Sea Bath Soak at the 2021- 2022 Alaska Symphony of Seafood awards ceremony on Feb. 24 in Juneau. Flickinger's company is among the top 10 finalists given booth space at the Seafood Expo North America trade show in Boston on March 13-15, but Flickinger said she won't be there.
Though honored to be among the regional award winners invited to the trade show, she said it's not feasible for her to go to Boston. Craig-based Seagrove Kelp Co. and Ocean Beauty Seafoods, which has multiple plants under the company OSI Seafoods across Alaska, including in Petersburg, are up for awards at the expo.
"Looking at travel costs, I don't think it's worth the time and money to go," Flickinger said last Thursday.
The bath soak won the grand prize in Juneau after nabbing the beyond-the-plate award at the same competition. Her product contains Pacific sea salt and Alaska bull kelp.
Flickinger skipped the Juneau event because she'd just gotten back from that big trade show on the East Coast and had already done a lot of travel. She learned she had won when a friend at Barnacle Foods in Juneau texted her from the Feb. 24 award ceremony. "She sent me a message that night."
"It's still great to win the (grand prize) award - it was totally unexpected," Flickinger said.
As a non-seafood brand established in 2020, Flickinger said winning the grand prize says a lot about her ability to beat the competition. "I was up against some heavy hitters. A lot of the brands and entrants, like Trident (Seafoods) have been around for a long time. It feels like a major accomplishment - to be a just-starting-out body care brand - to win."
She said it feels good to be recognized in that way by the seafood industry for her skin care and body care product that uses a mariculture ingredient, a budding economic sector.
"I do use a lot of kelp, it has a lot of potential and I'm excited to keep digging into that, and finding other ways to develop markets for that ingredient and that resource," Flickinger said.
Reader Comments(0)