DRAPER — Kami Day used to spend evenings working in the kitchen, mixing plants and oils together to create the perfect product — all while her kids ran around the house complaining about the strong smells.
Day's only real experience with mixing ingredients and chemicals prior to this was mixing hair dye at her salon, so creating a brand-new product was no easy task. She ordered a bunch of oils and plants and conducted research to learn what oils caused a heating or cooling effect, how to make it absorb into the skin and how to make it smell good.
So she kept pushing forward through the trial and error, laying out tin foil on her kitchen counter to mix ingredients until she found a consistency she liked and then backtracking to figure out what she put into it.Kami Day, chief operating officer for Muscle MX, created CBD sports balms that are providing pain relief for customers.
Shirlyn's Natural Foods store, which was just a few doors down from her salon, became the first client of Muscle MX in 2016, offering to sell the product at the store.Muscle MX was created as a sports balm for athletes to use during workouts, but it grew to have a wider audience. A mold is used to fill containers with a sports balm at the Muscle MX warehouse in Sandy on June 21.
Early on, the Muscle MX store got shut down on Shopify because the payment processors decided they didn't want to work with CBD companies and halted payments. The next several months were spent doing everything by hand, in a space that wasn't meant for production — but at least the products were in their own space and not in her house, Day recalled.
The building they were in actually did catch fire a few months after Muscle MX was moved out, which was fortunate for Day's company, but devastating to the other businesses in that building.When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Day was grateful to have a building where they could continue fulfilling online orders and growing their company.
Muscle MX has grown to include a CBD lotion and has partnered with other companies for a line of oils and a collection of gummies."It's so warming to see that we're helping so many people with their ailments," Day said. "Whether it's just getting old and bodies hurting or it's fibromyalgia or arthritis or bad knees ... there's just so many different ways that we're helping people and it keeps us going.