Growing Businesses in Flagstaff

MOONSHOT CLIENTS: BEE WELL

The Flagstaff City Council adopted a few new programs to help the businesses in Flagstaff during the summer of 2020. This is a celebration of two of the programs and the two Flagstaff businesses on their way to growing in Flagstaff, making the world a better place with a little encouragement from two new small business assistance programs from the City of Flagstaff.

The programs are the Innovate Waste/Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) Challenge and the Business Retention and Expansion Incentive. The Innovate Waste/PPE Challenge 2020 is the second year of the challenge that invited entrepreneurs to examine the materials going into the City of Flagstaff landfill, and to then divert some material by converting that material into a product or service that would also launch a new company. When the world got to know COVID-19, the challenge was expanded to invite entrepreneurs to consider a PPE element as well.

A year ago, Bee Well did not exist. Alex Kaufman and Dan Dunn were friends working at a local coffee shop/restaurant. They both had been in Flagstaff for years. Kaufman has been a coach at Flag High, worked at OVRLND, and generally spent time helping people to be their best and to be outside. When Kaufman and Dunn were let go as the coffee shop, like so many other businesses in March and April of 2020, shut down or drastically reduced their employees, they wondered what to do next. As the tragic stories of death were heard every day and in growing numbers, particularly in the Navajo and Hopi populations, Kaufman and Dunn were driven to positively impact those who were without critical infrastructure like running water. As the world learned that washing hands should be done very regularly to stop the spread of COVID-19, what were those families without running water to do? With a background in biology and chemistry and having secured a barrel of isopropyl alcohol, the idea became clear: hand sanitizer.
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The Bee Well handmade hand sanitizer kills viruses by using 70% isopropyl alcohol by volume, purified water, and organic vegetable glycerin, hydrogen peroxide, organic geranium and eucalyptus oils, without the strong aroma of alcohol. Their hand sanitizer is great for use where access to soap and water is limited. Bee Well connected with Moonshot@NACET and moved into the facility in July and has been growing ever since. In December, Kaufman and Dunn participated in Moonshot@NACET’s Makers & Shakers Week, which also included the competitive pitch event known as the Innovate Waste/PPE Challenge. Bee Well has been awarded $5,000 in business development funds, which will be used to purchase equipment such as a label machine to streamline the most time-consuming part of their operations: labeling bottles. A testament to its mission, Bee Well has donated more than 1,000 bottles of its products to schools, hospitals, frontlines workers and shelters, so people who don’t have running water can have hand sanitizer. Find Bee Well products around Flagstaff or go to the website https://beewell.care/ today.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE: 
https://www.flagstaffbusinessnews.com/growing-businesses-in-flagstaff/