Ambitious new lines Lanikai Bath and Body and Pure Hapa have joined the booming bath-and-body business in Hawai'i. It's a good fit for the Islands, where we grow many ingredients that spas worldwide provide to their clients at great expense.

Our ocean offers up seaweed. Island orchards are laden with macadamia and kukui nuts. Luscious tropical fruits such as mango, liliko'i, avocado, papaya and pineapple are the basis for lotions and potions, while healing, moisturizing lavender, orchids and aloe abound.

Hawai'i is also a source of the latest trendy skin-care ingredient: noni.

Baby boomers are helping to spur the growth of the bath-and-body business. At an age where they may have everything they want or need, they seek experiential products that will soothe, pamper and de-stress. And local companies are responding.

Oils of Aloha, a North Shore cosmetic line, recently redesigned its packaging and produced a TV ad campaign. Its wares are based on kukui nut oil, an ingredient Hawaiians have used for centuries to protect their skin from the ravages of saltwater, sun and wind.

Connie Gayle, a pioneer in the use of island-ingredients, is continually improving on and expanding her skin-care and hair products, based on orchids, papaya and other natural products.

'Aiea residents Steve Cromwell and JoAnn Takushi, the owners of The Soap Box line of made-in-Hawai'i soaps and lotions, have moved their small business from the family home and garden to a warehouse in Waipahu with a view to further expansion.

Joining in: two new bath-and-body lines — one made in Hawai'i, the other manufactured in California but inspired by Island family roots.

LANIKAI BATH AND BODY

Gloria Garvey and Brook Gramann have been in business together for 16 years as The Brand Strategy Group, helping companies such as Hawaiian Host, Kahuku Brand and Hawai'i's Wood market themselves as a recognizable "brand."

Now they are branding themselves — as Lanikai Bath and Body, an extensive line of locally made products and a retail store the couple opened in Kailua on Sept. 28.

This is truly a family business. Garvey's son, Ian, 26, manages day-to-day operations of the retail store. Gramann's twin sons, Adam and Douglas, 19 and full-time students at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, will "be the heavy labor guys," Gramann explained.

Gramann's brother and sister-in-law, Wayne and Mona Parker, are the interior designers and visual merchandisers. Garvey's husband, Mark Hanington, and David Gramann are also involved. Financing is family-based, too.

Garvey and Brook Gramann traveled across the country to research spa products. "Brand Strategy has taught us that we need to know everything that's going on everywhere, so we did a retail audit tour," Gramann said.

Deciding that "made in Hawai'i" was a high priority, the partners chose Denise Diamond of Kula, Maui, to produce the products and packaging.

Diamond has been working with tropical scents since 1989, creating skin-care products for many of the Islands' well-known spas. She worked with Lanikai Bath and Body to create signature fragrances from essential oils.

The result is an ambitious launch of more than 100 products in 18 scents, with lines for both genders and all ages.

Naupaka is a unisex line inspired by the Hawaiian myth of the maiden and her lover, separated by her father and banished to the mountains and the sea.

Pohaku is a line for men with a sandalwood fragrance and the moisturizing properties of kukui, macadamia and avocado oils, as well as vitamin E. Lanikai Girl is a warm vanilla sugar and pear berry scent especially for tweens. Buddha Surf is an "unzented" line with funky descriptions such as "Out of Body Lotion" and "Be Your Body Wash."

Hawaiian Tropical fragrances include Mango Coconut, Tahitian Gardenia, Orchid Vanilla and Plumeria. Botanicals are Kamuela Rose, Green Tea, Orange Blossom and Cucumber Melon. The pure aromatherapy line is formulate with essential oils and organic botanical extracts in four scents: Earth, Air, Fire and Ocean.

A host of complementary products are also sold in the store: Hot Dog shampoos for pampered pooches, Cucina kitchen products (Oprah's fave is the tomato basil), Vitry microfiber towels and embroidered towels for yoga, Pilates, tennis and workouts.

The partners have also created a logo cotton pareo that's based on one they were given in Kuala Lumpur, in a tube style appropriate for beach or bath. Maiden Hawaii soaps are cleverly presented in crack-seed jars.

Garvey and Gramann do not plan to give up their day jobs yet. Their long-term goal is to expand and perhaps even franchise Lanikai Bath and Body.

PURE HAPA

Yes, Nadyne Kealaokopono Kim-Orona knows the name of her company, Pure Hapa, is an oxymoron. But it came to her like a bolt out of the blue as she sat watching the whales from the beach on Lana'i — and she just felt it was right.

The California native, who is hapa Hawaiian, Korean and Irish, had been creating skin-care products in her kitchen using ingredients she had learned of from her Hawaiian maternal grandfather, Albert Naukana, and hapa-Hawaiian grandmother, Nancy Trask of Kilauea, Kaua'i: noni, azuki bean, papaya, haupia and pineapple.

Having retired from the high-tech industry, she was looking for something else to do — something she could call her own. So she called on her Asian and Hawaiian roots.

"I was always intrigued as to why my Hawaiian elders had the most exquisite skin, giving no clue to their true chronological age," Kim-Orona said. She went back to her roots and learned as much as she could about ingredients she remembered her grandmother using, such as noni juice from her tree in Kilauea and the azuki beans she had used as an exfoliant.

Kim-Orona is also a fan of ginseng, which she believes helped her father, David Kim, a merchant seaman who was raised on the slopes of Punchbowl and attended Iolani School, live 11 years with lung cancer.

An exotic mixologist at heart, Kim-Orona began by making batches of lotions in her kitchen, then hired a California chemist to assist. "I get the noni and many other ingredients from Hawai'i whenever possible," she explained.

Pure Hapa currently consists of six products: