Utah CBD balm company growing with goal of 'instant relief' for people in pain

Estimated read time: 9-10 minutes

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.

It was eight years ago and, although she had little money and was struggling to keep her hair salon business afloat, Day knew she had the ability to make a good pain-relief product. So she kept working: mixing, adjusting, pouring and starting over dozens of times. She felt "an angel on my shoulder, coaxing me and telling me what to do because it just came so naturally for me," she said.

The product she devised in her kitchen in Draper is Muscle MX, a CBD-based pain-relief balm that has made more than $3 million in sales.

Day's business partner, Mike Baghoomian, came up with the idea of incorporating CBD oil into a topical product. In 2015, he had a feeling CBD was going to become a health trend and wanted to be one of the firsts in the business.

As a self-proclaimed "product junkie" who loved skin care, hair care, body care and being healthy, Day was interested from the beginning. The salon she owned, Jagged Edge, had been successful for almost 10 years, but it was getting harder and harder for her to pay the bills, so she was "desperate at the time to look at new opportunities."

Baghoomian and Day realized there was a space for a pain relief topical. Biofreeze, Icy Hot and Deep Blue were available, but Day wanted to create a balm that was made with more natural ingredients, including CBD, that was easier to apply.

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.

Although she started out with the goal to make one product, she ended up creating two sports balms in a deodorant-type container: one to activate the muscles prior to a workout; and one to provide pain relief as you recover from a workout.

"I really started playing off of what oils are heating, what oils are cooling. And really, like I said, the angel on my shoulder just helped me put some oils together," Day said. "The hardest part was making it smell good with all of those strong scents and essential oils when you combine them ... so I really had to go with my heart and go with what I liked."

Day said at the time she was "dirt broke" and buying even a tiny jar of CBD was expensive, but "those first years were crucial."

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.

Her secret ingredient in the recipe: her own rendition of arnica oil that helps with inflammation.

"That was where the pressure was really on because I knew I had something but I had to make it come to life," she said.

With the trust and support of her salon clients, she passed out samples and received feedback on her product and started getting some buzz by word of mouth.

"That was a fun way to see it blossom, to see how people were responding to it," Day said. "CBD, at the time, was very new and so there were a lot of timid people out there to give it a try but, actually, I was really impressed with the openness to give something new a try."

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.

During the first planning stages of Muscle MX, Baghoomian's father suffered a severe stroke and was in the hospital for a long time. Day said the duo "pushed our foot on the gas" after the stroke because they wanted to have a pain relief product for Baghoomian's dad to use on his aches and pains.

"This is something we could maybe help him with," she said. "We wanted to do whatever we could to make him feel better."

Baghoomian started bringing the product to the hospital and applying it on his father and it worked wonders in his recovery. Day said the nurses started asking for samples and Day realized having the balms in health stores was a good start, but she needed to get in the door of the medical field.

Muscle MX started introducing products at massage clinics, physical therapy offices and pharmacies, to more directly reach people who could benefit from the product.

"Our biggest clientele are more elderly than anything because they're in pain, and they have that thinner skin, where, if you're applying a topical, it's instant gratification, instant relief," Day said. Popping a pain relief pill, she added, "takes time and it doesn't always work, and so this instant relief was just huge for so many people."

Because CBD, or cannabidiol, is federally regulated — though it does not cause a high — a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings have made growing Muscle MX difficult, Day said. Banks, insurance companies and credit card processing companies didn't trust the company, at first, even though the CBD products were legal.

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.

"Things like that have been hard to work through, but it's also been a very good learning experience along the way. Now, it's a little easier to find these companies that specialize in CBD, but it's taken a long time for those companies to blossom and become what they are," she said.

Day's house was the home-base for the company for a long time. "I was the accountant. I was producing all the products. I was doing all the shipping and fulfillment," she said.

She would have deliveries to her house and do all the production, packing and labeling in the basement while her kids said the balms "stunk so bad." By mid-2019, Muscle MX was becoming something bigger and Day decided to close the salon and move Muscle MX into an office building in Midvale that Baghoomian's family owned.

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.

She kept getting worried about the setup and was scared she would accidentally burn the building down. She knew she needed to find a better place than the temporary fix.

"It's always in the nick of time, I swear, that help always came right when I needed it," she said. "I felt like there was something guiding me."

In December 2019, Baghoomian and Day found a warehouse in Sandy they could sublease and, finally, they had a space all their own to properly and safely make products.

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.

"Between the five of us, we have had our ups and downs, but for the most part we are all hard workers just trying to make it in this crazy CBD industry," she said. "We have grown this basically on our own from the beginning."

Day is hoping the company will reach $5 million in sales this year and start selling internationally.

"We still got a lot of work to do. We made a lot of mistakes along the way as everyone does in businesses, but I think those mistakes are valuable lessons. I'd rather make those in the beginning than later on when we actually have a lot more to lose," she said. "I'm grateful for those lessons, as hard as they can be at the time."

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."

As a small team of around 15 employees, Day said she is proud to see how much her company has grown in an industry that is not always understood.

She said the company has had to do some "damage control" for people who may have tried lower-quality CBD products and are now hesitant to try Muscle MX. Different types of CBD can drastically alter the effectiveness of a product.

To combat this, Muscle MX prioritizes giving people samples so they can decide for themselves if they like the product.

"We ate a lot from the cost of that but then, in return, people started talking and sharing the product with somebody that needed it. That was really helpful to get the product flowing," Day said.

Tackling advertising, sales, marketing, website design and more has also been a challenge with such a federally regulated product, but it has also been so fulfilling for Day.

"I hope I can continue to provide relief. There are so many people that tell me we have changed their way of living — they're able to get off the couch more, they're more active, they're not having to take the pills they were taking before," she said.

Her goal isn't just about making a profit, it's about helping people live a healthy and pain-free life.

"I didn't realize how many people were actually in pain. I was young and not in pain myself and you don't realize until you start creating a product that is helping people and people start telling you their stories," Day said. "I feel like I can offer something that is so helpful for them and it's just so rewarding."