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Mix ancient remedies, modern regulations
and marketing strategies,
and Susan Gans hopes she has big business.
Susan Gans is taking Acheaway to new heights.
EDITH BROIDA
Special to The Jewish News
I
f Ponce de Leon discovered the Fountain of
Youth today, he would need approval from the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before
setting up shop. In addition, he would have to
consider how to package the potion; advertise it
price it and present it to the public. In short, it's one
thing to have a great product; it's another to find the
magic means of selling it.
Such is the challenge for Susan Gans, president of
Geologix, Inc., the parent company for AcheAway
Products.
Gans is in the midst of expanding the market for
AcheAway's pain relieving gel rub. Her product line
also includes a foot soak, foot lotion, massage body
lotion and bath soak grains, all enriched with the
potent, minerahnfused water from the 600-million-
year-old Michigan Basin under Mt. Clemens. Even
with success stories that date back a century, Gans
finds it a formidable task to create brand-name
recognition.
From 1873 to 1974, countless pilgrims sought
comfort at the Mt. Clemens baths. In its heyday,
visitors patronized 11 different establishments. The
buildings were architecturally splendid and elegantly
furnished. The clientele included Babe Ruth, Mae
West, George M. Cohan, William Randolph Hearst,
Jack Dempsey and Helena Rubenstein.
Jews were among the pain-ridden visitors. Mary
Schwartz of West Bloomfield remembers how, as a
teenager, she used to accompany her parents, the
late Jacob and Anna Resni0c, to Arethusa House, a
veritable mecca. What she recalls most, she says,
wrinkling her nose in distaste, was the strong sulfur
2/19
1999
64 Detroit Jewish News
odor that caused her to question if the baths could
cure anything.
The odor emanated from 30 different natural min-
erals. The concentration in the Mt. Clemens water
was said to exceed spa waters at Baden-Baden and the
Dead Sea. Visitors affirmed that they experienced
relief from pain. Many claimed that symptoms related
to eczema, arthritis and rheumatism disappeared.
The bathhouses are long gone, but the well water,
says Gans, is considered no less effective. Recently,
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Mt. Clemens, founded
in 1899 as the St. Joseph Sanitarium, resumed offer-
ing therapeutic baths and massages as part of its
100th birthday commemoration. Gans' AcheAway
concentrated bath soak grains and massage lotion
are incorporated in the hospital's treatments.
Gans is not the first to use Mt. Clemens mineral
water as an active ingredient for health products.
The late Max Simon of Oak Park, suffering from a
chronic aching shoulder, remembered that the Mt.
Clemens baths had eased his pain in earlier years,
and he developed a few products before he died. But
they never made it to the mass market. Gans hopes
to change that.
Gans admits to being a newcomer to the health
and beauty products field. Raised in Huntington
Woods, she used her flair for fashion to begin a first
career as accessories buyer at J. L. Hudson Co. In
1974, after marriage to ophthamologist Bob Gans,
she became a successful commercial real estate bro-
ker in Birmingham.
Two years ago, she decided she was ready for
something different. She learned about Max
Simon's fledgling business and was intrigued with
the possibilities. She bought him out shortly before
his death.
Gans' original thought was that mineral-water-
based products would be ideal for spas. They would
be her first marketing target. She wrote inquiry let-
ters to 12 spas and heard from one, a first sign that
AcheAway's acceptance would be slow in coming.
Gans began marketing efforts in earnest. She
made frequent trips to Mt. Clemens to revisit and
verify the source of the mineral water. She consulted
chemists and chose Lone Star laboratory in
Carrollton, Texas, for manufacturing the therapeutic
mineral water gel, and Mardale Inc. in Troy for the
other products. She hired a Washington law firm
familiar with FDA requirements. She assembled the
necessary documentation for FDA approval.
The AcheAway sobriquet had come with the
business, but Gans emphasizes that stating what
users can expect from the products requires precise
wording. She can not promise cures, but she can
suggest potential relief.
AcheAway's major selling point is the use of
mostly natural ingredients. Capsaicin, for example,
used in the mineral water gel, is known to have
relieved pain for centuries: it is derived from the red
pepper plant. Combined with the mineral water,
Gans says, it brings at least temporary relief for
muscle, back and joint pain, strains and sprains and
bruises. Unlike many similar products, she adds,
AcheAway is not "burning hot" or "icy cold." It
contains no artificial dyes and no animal ingredi-
ents. The formula is simple so the price runs below
comparable analgesics.
Gans attests that AcheAway works "in synergy
with the body's own natural pain relief system," a
feature that speaks to advocates of alternative med-
ical treatments.
So once you have a company up and running, and