Oct 06, 2026

The big exhale

by Sylvie Roy

Alright, I think that today might just be the last installment of my story.

A big thank you to everyone who has reached out with words of encouragement or shared their own stories with me as I posted each part. I don’t really know if I have the right words, but the kindness and solidarity I’ve felt have just... I don’t know how to say it other than it made my heart happy and fuzzy. So thank you.

Ok, the story.

In the last part, I told you I had a big decision to make: my friend Meggan, who also owns a small business that specializes in making lip balm, was willing to take on all of Eclair Lips’ production work.

A partnership with her meant so much flexibility and being able to keep all the things about Eclair Lips that I love. But since her business is located in Vermont, which is just a few hours’ drive from me, it meant the product would be US made instead of Canadian made.

I have this trick I use when I make decisions. I try to imagine what life would feel like if each scenario were true.

If I imagined looking for a similar partner in Canada and starting this process from scratch, I’d immediately hold my breath and think, omg, do I have the bandwidth to even think about doing this right now?

In contrast, when I thought about partnering with Meggan, it felt like a big exhale where you let go of all the tension and feel the weight slide off your shoulders.

And I don’t know if it’s a thing that happens in your 40s, but I can’t handle the clenched-stomach, holding-my-breath options anymore.

I’m all about the big exhales.

So I said yes.

Over the summer, we worked out all the details and I got my first samples of a tube of Eclair Lips made by her team!

It was exciting, but also so surreal.

And it felt like freedom.

Freedom from the anxiety that would grip me during production. Freedom from the stress of having to pay for a facility where I made the product. Freedom to focus on the parts of the business I’m best at.

But most of all, more freedom with my time to be there for my daughters in every way I feel is important for them.

This also meant that it was time to clean out that storage locker where all my “just in case” supplies had been living for the past few months.

A lot of it would be headed Meggan’s way since I had plenty of ingredients and lip balm tubes on hand.

But there was also some stuff I had to get rid of.

I think the hardest thing was a brand new shipment of labels I had ordered just before my separation, because at that time, the plan had been that we would keep making lip balm for at least another year, if not two.

But all $4,000 worth of those labels had information on them that wasn’t accurate anymore now that someone else was making the product.

So I packed them all up in my car, drove to the dump and tossed them into the recycling dumpster.

I felt sick and relieved all at the same time.

Sometimes, you have to do something that really sucks in order to turn the page.

Then came the challenge of putting everything else on the pallet.

It took me a few very sweaty hours, but in the end, I had a huge 800 lb cube of shrink-wrapped stuff ready to ship to Meggan.

I filled out what I felt was a lot of paperwork, only to be told I needed more. And more. And suddenly, I had 87 pages for my customs broker.

Even then, the shipment was still being held up because one of my suppliers refused to communicate some details my broker needed to clear it.

So a week after the pallet was picked up, I drove to the Day & Ross depot in Moncton, took my pallet apart to find the offending items, removed them from the shipment, wrapped the whole thing back up again, and finally got it on its way.

After that, it was smooth sailing!

Meggan’s team received everything and got to work making my very first order.

And I got to work reformatting all of my label designs to work with the style of label she prints in-house.

So no more huge shipments of labels for me anymore! Meggan’s team can just print what’s needed, when they need it.

BUT...

The week before the first order was ready to go, more tariff stuff went down, and I suddenly had to pay a 50% tariff on the portion of the order coming to the Canadian warehouse.

As annoying as it is, I know I just have to roll with it.

It’s frustrating, but at the rate these changes happen, there’s no point making reactive decisions in the face of tariffs unless those decisions will continue to serve me well once all this trade mess gets cleared up.

Last week, all the new fall flavors and the restock on tinted lip balms and scrubs hit the shop.

It has been a long road, but we are here baby!!!

Just this past weekend, I headed off to Dallas for another mastermind meeting where Meggan and I got to catch up and chat about the order of holiday flavors that is now in the works.

And of course, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to snap a picture together.

So you can now officially consider yourself all caught up on what’s happened at Eclair Lips in the past year.

Thank you so much for hanging in there with me.

And now, finally, I get to see what this next version of Eclair Lips looks like.

Thank you for letting me share my story with you. Here are the other parts I've shared:

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