About Us

Sage & Thistle Handmade Goods is a small, Toronto-based family-run soap and body care business. Mikael does all product design and creation, communication and marketing, and runs the Sage & Thistle Urban Garden. Sam works behind the scenes to make things run smoothly, helping build relationships with local farmers and suppliers, running deliveries, lifting heavy things and checking for errors in Mikael's Instagram posts. Our three young kiddos help out, napping through deliveries, popping bubble wrap and making sure we take snack breaks. Our name, Sage & Thistle Handmade Goods, is representative of who we are: Sage has always been one of Mikael's favorite plants and Thistle is an homage to Sam's Scottish heritage.

Mikael, pregnant with our first child and frustrated at the lack of natural baby care product options, started researching ingredients. From that research she made our very first product -- an organic diaper cream. From there, we developed bath soaks and body scrubs, gifting them to friends and family. Ultimately we decided to try making soap.

Sam, a butcher by trade, was frustrated at seeing animal fats routinely wasted and tossed into the garbage. After lots of research and planning, he made our first batch of soap using hand-rendered tallow in a mold he made out of scrap wood. We waited six weeks for the soaps to cure and when we tried them we found that our own rustic soap worked better than anything we had purchased in a store. It left our skin feeling soft and moisturized -- we were hooked! Soon, requests for our soaps and other products began pouring in from friends and family. As word spread, we were invited to do our first market. It was a day mostly spent chasing our energetic toddler and soothing our newborn, but we were proud to offer our small selection of natural goods. Though we had to leave early to put our babies to bed, the spark was lit and Sage & Thistle Handmade Goods began to grow.

 

We've come a long way since that first market in 2018, though we do still have toddlers running around our market tables! As we grow our product line, creating more artisanal soaps and other natural body and home care goods, our commitment to quality remains the bedrock of our company. Mikael still makes each and every product by hand in small batches using the best natural ingredients, right in our home studio. We now create a line of vegan and vegetarian soaps and other products made with organic and/or Fair Trade Certified oils and plant butters. The animal fats used in some of our soaps are sourced exclusively from ethically-practicing Ontario farms with whom we have close relationships. Our clays, salts and essential oils are pure and unadulterated, while many of our botanicals are responsibly wildcrafted, foraged and grown in our own pesticide- and herbicide-free Urban Garden! Keeping our chain of supply as clean and local as possible will always be important to us. Each of our products is completely natural and free of synthetic dyes or fragrances, preservatives, unnecessary chemicals, phthalates, fillers or detergents.

We believe in giving back to the communities that support us. One way we can do that is to donate soap and other natural products to Toronto organizations that care for and provide essential services to our city's more vulnerable populations. Our goal is to provide our communities with the same products we want for our own family: natural body and home goods that are beautiful, functional and made with real ingredients we can trust.