This week’s Founder Friday hears from Cedarwood Road founder Rochell Toia on what it took to back herself and build something from nothing.
If there’s one thing entrepreneurship has taught me, it’s that growth comes from taking action, listening to your customers and never being afraid to improve
Rochell Toia was standing on the tarmac at an Australian airport, watching another aircraft push back, when she realised her heart was no longer there. After twelve years in ground operations, she knew she wanted to build something of her own. She just did not yet know exactly what it would be.
The answer had actually started forming years earlier, on a family camping trip, when her youngest daughter was seven months old.
Her youngest had developed eczema on her face. Every doctor recommended steroid creams. Rochell refused. “They are just band-aid fixes and having such a young baby, I wasn’t going to just put anything on her skin,” she says. So she used nothing. Then the family went camping and something shifted. “Being out in the fresh air in nature, the sunshine and the fresh water, her eczema started to clear, and after we went home, it never came back.”
She filed the experience away. Years passed. Then her eldest daughter developed eczema on the inside of her elbows. A nurse preparing to take a blood test looked at her arm and said she could not put a needle through it. The skin was scarred, dark, and so dry it felt like leather. That moment brought the camping trip flooding back. “I thought back to it and thought: if only I could just bottle nature.”
She started researching. She started making soaps and body butters at home, experimenting with ingredients, testing formulations. But the products she made first looked nothing like what Cedarwood Road is today.
Learning what natural actually means
Her earliest products were brightly coloured body butters and soaps scented with fragrance oils in fun scents like Summer Melon. “At the time, I genuinely thought I was creating natural skincare because I simply didn’t know any different,” she says. She sent out a public survey asking for honest feedback. Several people said they would not buy the products because they did not look or feel truly natural. The feedback stopped her cold. “It made me ask myself: what does natural actually mean?”
She immersed herself in research. She learned about butters, oils, and essential oils. The more she learned, the more she stripped back. Artificial colours went. Synthetic fragrance oils went. Unnecessary fillers and preservatives went. What remained was a product built entirely on what it left out rather than what it put in. “If the ingredient doesn’t serve a purpose, it doesn’t belong in there,” she says. “When I look at how previous generations cared for their skin, they used just soap, water and oils and ingredients found in nature. It made me question: how did skincare get so complicated.”
Cedarwood Road’s philosophy became the brand’s entire identity: nature made it, we bottled it.
Markets as the foundation
Trust can’t be rushed. It’s built through honesty, consistency and genuinely caring about the people you’re creating products for
In 2023 Rochell launched at weekend markets across Victoria. Every single weekend was booked. One week Echuca. The next Phillip Island. She spent hours on the road thinking and strategising, but the markets gave her something more valuable than time to plan. They gave her direct access to customers. She watched how people interacted with her products, listened to their questions, and heard feedback that shaped every decision that followed.
Her first market almost did not happen. “I had to talk myself into it because I was so nervous, but I did it anyway. That one decision changed my business.” At that very first market, the soaps did not even have labels. She was cutting them on a Cricut from designs she made in Canva. The brand looked nothing like it does today. But the customers came, and they came back.
The markets also taught her what to keep and what to cut. “I made sure that I kept the products customers were interacting with and got rid of the ones that they weren’t.” Twenty-five products became a tighter, more confident range built on what she knew worked.
Education became a significant part of the job. Many customers did not understand the difference between a body butter and a body cream. Because Cedarwood Road’s body butters are waterless and concentrated, with no fillers, they are thicker than anything most customers had used before. Rochell received negative feedback simply because people did not know what they were holding. She learned to explain not just what made the products different but why they were made that way. “Trust can’t be rushed. It’s built through honesty, consistency and genuinely caring about the people you’re creating products for.”
Leaving the tarmac behind
As Cedarwood Road grew, the decision that had been building for years became impossible to defer. Rochell was still working full-time in aviation. Every aircraft she stood on reminded her that her heart was somewhere else. She read a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. One line stayed with her: I wish that I had let myself be happier. “It made me realise that happiness isn’t something that simply happens to you. It’s something you choose.”
She left aviation and committed to Cedarwood Road full-time. The business model she has built is predominantly wholesale, getting Cedarwood Road onto the shelves of retail stores rather than chasing direct-to-consumer volume. She has learned that every no from a retailer is not a rejection. “It means not right now and you will get a lot of no’s from retailers.” She kept going anyway.
Every product is still made by hand in her home garage. That is not a limitation she is apologetic about. It is central to what Cedarwood Road is.
What she knows now
One of her most expensive lessons was branding products before the range was finalised. During a rebrand, she had a graphic designer create packaging for products she later decided to discontinue. “Looking back, I should have finalised my product range first before investing in branding and packaging. Sometimes slowing down and planning properly can save you both time and money in the long run.”
Her advice to founders considering the leap is the same thing she had to tell herself before that first market. “Just start. There is beauty in the start. So many people wait for the perfect logo, or packaging or branding. They wait for the perfect timing, but the perfect timing doesn’t exist. Start with what you have and grow slowly from there.”
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