How I Took My Fashion Background and Ended Up Running a Natural Mosquito Repellent Brand
From Wrangler Jeans to my own boutique to a jar of beads I loved so much I bought the company. This is my story.
I'm a Kansas girl through and through. I grew up outside — catching crawdads in the creek with my brother, riding motorcycles, dodging my mom's hairbrush — and the outdoors has been home base my whole life. A little dirt has never scared me.
Neither, it turns out, has reinvention.
My career started in fashion: five years at Wrangler Jeans, learning the business of American denim from the inside. Then I struck out on my own and opened a boutique called Pink Saloon in El Dorado, Kansas — and grew it into a Wichita mainstay over a full decade before selling it. Most people would have called that a career. I started a clothing line instead, made right here in the USA, for the simplest reason there is: I couldn't find the perfect tee I wanted to wear, so I made it.
I'm a builder by nature. I've never been able to leave a good idea alone.
Which is exactly what makes this chapter so unexpected. Because Mosquito Beads — the brand I now own and pour everything into — wasn't my idea at all.
It Started on the Bleachers
A friend created the product. I first tried it at my daughter's softball game, on one of those long Kansas evenings on the bleachers where the mosquitoes usually win and everyone heads for the car early.
That night, the mosquitoes lost.
I was hooked — as a mom and a customer first. I believed in it so much that I did something most customers don't: I bought the company. Today I'm the proud sole owner of Mosquito Beads. I didn't invent it. I fell for it — and then I gave it everything I have.
Pour. Don't Spray.
What won me over is how differently Mosquito Beads works from everything else in the bug aisle. There's no spray, no smoke, no flame, and nothing that touches your skin. It's a jar of biodegradable beads infused with a natural blend of plant-based essential oils — geraniol, citronella, and peppermint. You open the jar, pour the beads around wherever you're sitting, and stay outside. One jar covers up to 1,000 square feet, delivers peak performance for one to two days, and reactivates with a quick shake. It's pet safe when used as directed, and — like my clothing line before it — it's made in the USA.
That's why our tagline says it all: Pour. Don't Spray.
And this is where my fashion background earns its keep. The product I found was great — but the brand you see today is what I built around it. The sky blue, the warm sand, the packaging you'd happily leave out on the patio table instead of hiding under the sink. Fifteen-plus years in denim, retail, and apparel taught me that women don't just buy function; we buy how something makes us feel. I wanted a repellent you'd be proud to set on the table, and I sweat every detail to get there — from the jar in your hand to the ads in your feed.
What I'm Really Selling
Honestly? It isn't bug control. It's evenings.
The extra hour on the porch after dinner. The campfire nobody abandons. The endless bleacher nights at a kid's softball game where the only thing anyone's swatting is a fly ball. That's what this blog — Outside Together — is all about, and it's what I hope to build beyond the beads: a community of people who'd rather be outside, trading tips and long sunsets and all the little moments mosquitoes have been stealing for too long.
If you've read this far, thank you. You being part of this means the world to a small team pouring everything into it.
Pour where you sit. Stay all night.
Joyfully,
Brooke Hebert
Owner, Mosquito Beads
Ready to take your evenings back? Shop Mosquito Beads — The Signature (18 oz) and The Sidekick (5 oz), natural mosquito repellent made in the USA.