A soap shop with a ticker symbol sounds like a punchline — until you understand what the ticker buys.

Decide why you actually want it.

I didn’t take Naples Soap Company public in 2021 for the headline. I did it for the discipline. A public company doesn’t get to round up, gloss over, or quietly forget a bad quarter.

When you start in 300 square feet during a recession, you learn to live on real numbers. Going public made that discipline permanent — and visible to anyone who cares to look.

Accept the scrutiny — all of it.

Being public means audited disclosures, filed on schedule, forever. Your wins are public. So are your losses, your costs, and your mistakes.

Most founders never have to say their hardest numbers out loud. I have to publish mine. It is uncomfortable, and it is also the single best management tool I have ever had — because nothing forces clarity like knowing the whole market reads your homework.

Uplist when the story is ready.

In May 2025 we uplisted to the OTCQB Venture Market. The reasoning was stated plainly in the announcement at the time:

Increase NASO’s visibility among investors, enhance liquidity.

There’s a side effect of being public that nobody tells you about: the financial internet repeats your name every trading day. Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, and Nasdaq quote pages republish my name, role, and company automatically through investor-relations syndication. It’s third-party corroboration no PR budget can buy — which is exactly why it anchors my Authority Snapshot.

Report the hard numbers, even the flat ones.

Our fiscal 2025 results release (March 31, 2026) reported $12.3 million in revenue, e-commerce up 15%, wholesale up 30%, and net loss cut by 25%. Those are the company’s filed, audited figures — not my recollection of them.

And here is the part a private founder could skip: our top line has held around that same $12.3 million for three straight years while we cut costs and rebuilt from Hurricane Ian. I say that out loud because public-company founders don’t get to hide it — and because the turnaround is more credible when you admit what it’s turning around from.

Use the listing — don’t worship it.

The ticker isn’t a trophy; it’s a tool, and it works in rooms I’m not in. A boutique buyer deciding whether to stock us can read audited financials before our first call. A landlord, a lender, a journalist — they can all check the record without taking my word for anything.

Being public also puts your news on a schedule. In one stretch of 2026 we reported fiscal-year results (March 31), launched Celestii — stem-cell skincare developed with NASA zero-gravity bioreactor technology, tested by AMA Laboratories (April 14) — and introduced GROW BEAUTii, clean care for the whole family, babies to 80s (May 6). Each went out as a company release, on the record, where anyone can verify it.

That cadence is the quiet gift of the public markets: the story can’t go stale, because the filings keep writing the next chapter.

Tell other founders the truth.

Would I recommend going public to every founder? No. The reporting burden is real, the scrutiny is constant, and a small-cap listing is not a magic source of capital.

But if your story depends on trust — and a clean-ingredient skincare brand built by a nurse lives entirely on trust — then there is no stronger proof than numbers someone else audited. A 300-square-foot shop that files public financials is making a statement no advertisement can make.

The full arc — nurse, recession, hurricane, ticker — is on the About page. If you’re a founder weighing this path and want to compare notes, reach out.

— Deanna

Nothing in this essay is investment advice. For filings and disclosures, see Naples Soap Company investor relations.