Longmont-based Goddess Garden soaks up $2M Series A funding round

LONGMONT — Organic sunscreen maker Goddess Garden has raised a $2 million Series A funding round as it preps for an expansion into Walmart next spring and further development of newer product lines.

Chief financial officer Paul Halter said the Longmont-based company, which has traditionally done well with natural-products retailers such as Whole Foods, has hit a tipping point with more-conventional retailers, getting on the shelves in places such as CVS, Walgreens and Kroger. While revenue will top $6 million this year, Halter said the company is poised to eclipse $10 million in 2017.

“We’ve done really well in the natural (channels),” Halter said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Now basically the market has been pushing our way. We’ve proven our concept of a natural sunscreen (with conventional retailers).”

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Vancouver, British Columbia-based Renewal Funds led the Goddess Garden funding round.

Halter said the cash will be used primarily to support the distribution into new retailers, as well as developing its other skincare product lines aside from sunscreen. But it’s sunscreen that has provided the company’s major entry into the market.

“We’re really replacing these chemical sunscreens that have chemicals in them that are problematic from a human health standpoint and also from an environmental standpoint,” Halter said.

CEO Nova Covington, Halter’s wife, started Goddess Garden in 2004. But it wasn’t until about 2009 that the company got serious about distribution, said Halter, who left his job at IBM three years ago to join Goddess Garden full-time.

Goddess Garden employs 24 people, mostly at its Longmont facility. Until recently, the company did all of its manufacturing there. But the rapid growth has led to the company contracting out some of its manufacturing elsewhere in the United States.

“With the growth we’re looking at, it would be a massive capital expansion requirement (to keep all of the manufacturing in-house), so that drove us to shift the model,” Halter said.