They understood my business in a way that I felt I hadn’t seen in anybody else.
Watch how Lotion Crafter doubled their search placements month over month, and established their cosmetic chemistry expertise on major AI platforms.
Lotion Crafter is a niche cosmetic chemical distributor based on Orcas Island in Washington’s San Juan Islands. Founded by Jenny Welch, the company supplies raw materials, cosmeceutical ingredients, and formulation tools to independent makers, small businesses, and contract manufacturers. With new customer growth slowing in early 2025, Jenny knew she needed to find better ways of communicating her company’s expertise online and driving high quality buyers for raw ingredients. Traditional marketing agencies kept treating her like a cosmetics retailer and just didn’t understand her business.
3 Core Challenges
Lotion Crafter Faced
1st Core Challenge:
New customer acquisition had slowed and the growth Jenny had counted on for years was no longer there.
1st Strategic Shift:
Search placements started doubling month over month, bringing in the traffic and revenue that had been declining.
2nd Core Challenge:
Marketing companies called constantly, but none seemed to really understand her business.
2nd Strategic Shift:
KeenView took time to learn her complex raw ingredients business and build a strategy that brought in qualified buyers.
3rd Core Challenge:
AI was changing how buyers find niche suppliers and the internal team didn’t have the expertise to keep up.
3rd Strategic Shift:
Lotion Crafter is now cited by AI platforms for its knowledge in cosmetic chemistry, a channel that didn’t exist before the partnership.
The Problem
In early 2025, Jenny was at a crossroads. Her business is 100% Internet based, and new customer growth had slowed significantly. More and more contract manufacturers and small business clients were using AI assistants like ChatGPT to find raw materials and formulation tools to create cosmetics. Even though she had a lot of great expert content on her website, she wasn’t showing up where people were searching. The unique nature of her business had always made it difficult to find good marketing partners and she was skeptical that she could really find a partner that could help. Most of them would assign junior account reps who would mistakenly see her business as a finished cosmetics company, and waste her resources and ad budgets on irrelevant content and terms.
She needed to reverse the decline in organic buyer traffic, and find ways to make sure that she remained visible as an expert in her space, building her brand and attracting long term clients.
The Solution
From her first interaction with KeenView it was clear that they had not only taken time to understand her business, but had the kind of experience she was looking for. After several discussions with the KeenView executive team, she knew they were the right group to move forward with.
The numbers followed. Top-tier search placements started doubling every month. AI platforms began citing Lotion Crafter for its knowledge and expertise. And Jenny got to go back to doing what she’s best at: sourcing new ingredients, supporting her customers, and running the company. The technical visibility work was being handled by people who actually knew what they were working on.
I get a lot of marketing calls from companies wanting to help us grow, and it became readily apparent that in some cases they hadn’t even looked at my website. They had no clue what Lotion Crafter did. When I first spoke to KeenView, it was clear they had done their research. They understood my business in a way I hadn’t seen in anybody else. What we started to see was numbers doubling every month. I don’t think there was a month that went by that I didn’t go, wow. We’re seeing our company cited for our knowledge, which I appreciate because it’s been an important part of why I started my company.
Jenny Welsch – CEO, Lotioncrafter
Jenny Welsch – CEO, Lotioncrafter