Today we’d like to introduce you to Stacey Moss.
Hi Stacey, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Moss Botanicals began long before it became a business. My relationship with plants, aromas and healing has been a thread throughout my life. I spent twenty years as a massage therapist, studied essential oils at the College of Botanical Healing Arts, and later earned my degree in Social and Behavioral Science, where my studies included traditional plant medicine in Guatemala. Eventually, the formulas I had been making for myself, friends and family became Moss Botanicals.
When VoyageLA first shared my story in 2019, I was rebuilding my life and business after losing nearly everything in the Thomas Fire. Looking back now, I realize rebuilding wasn’t a single event. It has been an ongoing process of adapting while trying to remain true to why I started.
COVID became another major turning point. My business shifted much more toward direct-to-consumer online sales, and unexpectedly, that allowed me to deepen my relationships with my customers. Moss Botanicals has always had an incredibly loyal customer base, and those relationships have carried the business through many transitions. Hearing how a blend has become part of someone’s daily ritual, helped them through grief or change, or simply stayed with them over the years continues to be one of the greatest sources of inspiration for me.
About three years ago, I moved to California’s Central Coast, closer to Big Sur and a landscape that has always been deeply inspiring to me. Last October, I became a California Naturalist, which gave me another way of understanding and engaging with the ecology and native plants of this place.
Alongside my relationship with plants, I have studied the Runes for many years. The Runes are an ancient Germanic alphabet, with each character carrying a name, sound and layers of symbolic meaning. They speak to the more mystical and intuitive part of who I am and have become a source of reflection and guidance in my life. I’ve never seen science, nature and intuition as opposing ideas. For me, they are different ways of paying attention—to plants, to place, to ourselves and to the patterns that connect us.
If I had to describe this chapter of Moss Botanicals, I would call it one of humble perseverance. I haven’t followed a perfectly straight path, and I’m less interested in growth for growth’s sake than I once was. What has kept me going is the work itself, the people who continue to support it, and knowing that these blends have found meaningful places in people’s lives. I’m still curious about where that relationship will take Moss Botanicals next.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. When VoyageLA first interviewed me, I was rebuilding Moss Botanicals after losing my home, my inventory and nearly my entire business in the Thomas Fire. At the time, that felt like the defining challenge of my entrepreneurial life. What I’ve learned since then is that resilience isn’t something you accomplish once. It’s something you practice.
COVID brought another period of uncertainty and required me to change the way I was doing business. Like many small businesses, I had to adapt quickly. Moving more toward direct-to-consumer online sales ultimately became a positive shift because it strengthened my relationships with customers, but it also meant learning to navigate an increasingly digital way of doing business.
I think one of my biggest challenges now is keeping up with the rapid pace of technology and the way it has changed how we communicate, market and even relate to one another. Moss Botanicals comes from a very different place. It is rooted in care for plants and people, in working with botanical materials thoughtfully, and in creating something with intention. At the same time, we are living in a culture with an enormous amount of information and what sometimes feels like an overload of “authenticity.” Everyone is being asked to constantly create content, tell their story and remain visible. For a small business, keeping up with that pace without allowing it to drown out the actual work can be challenging.
I’ve also had to redefine what success means to me. There is so much pressure in business to continually become bigger, produce more, sell more and measure success by constant growth. My path hasn’t looked like that. There have been periods of momentum and periods of uncertainty, and times when I’ve questioned what the next chapter should look like.
What has remained remarkably consistent is my customer base. Some people have been using these blends for many years, and they continue to tell me what the products mean to them and how they use them during different seasons of their lives. That relationship has carried Moss Botanicals through more than I could have imagined.
At this point, perseverance doesn’t mean forcing something to become bigger. It means continuing to listen—to the plants, to my customers, to my own intuition—and allowing the business to evolve without losing sight of why I created it in the first place.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
At the heart of Moss Botanicals is my belief that plants can support us in ways that are both practical and deeply personal. When I formulate, I consider the whole plant and the whole person—an essential oil’s naturally occurring chemistry, its aromatic profile, its traditional uses and its more subtle energetic qualities. Science and intuition have always existed alongside one another in my work.
I specialize in botanical aromatherapy blends that are intentionally simple in their presentation, but complex in their formulation. Many of my original blends—Balance, Relax, Euphoric, Let Go, Ceremony and Transform—grew out of experiences in my own life. They weren’t developed to fill a product category. They came from a personal need to create something meaningful, and over time, those very personal formulas found their way into other people’s lives.
My approach has remained remarkably consistent even as the natural beauty and wellness industry has changed around me. I care deeply about the quality and origin of the botanical materials I use and about creating products that feel personal rather than mass-produced.
I’m especially proud of the community that has grown around Moss Botanicals over the years, from longtime customers to independent retailers who understand what I create. Phoenix Shop at Nepenthe in Big Sur has been particularly meaningful, including the opportunity to create a private-label blend specifically for them. I’m also grateful to have Moss Botanicals represented at Mical in Cayucos, another wonderful independent shop here on the Central Coast.
Some of the stories people share with me stay with me for years. The blends have been used during grief, meditation, transition, travel, sleep and even at the end of life. I was recently told that Ceremony and Transform aromatic mists were used to comfort a woman as she was dying after a long and beautiful life. Her loved ones felt that the aromas helped ease her fear and brought her comfort as she began her journey to the other side. To know that something I created was chosen to be present during such an intimate and profound moment is difficult to put into words. It reminds me that these formulas can become much more than products in someone’s life.
Looking forward, I see Moss Botanicals continuing to deepen what has always been at its core: plants, people, nature and healing. One area I’m interested in exploring is bringing my work with the Runes into Moss Botanicals, using them as a form of reflection and guidance alongside botanical blends. After so many years of working with plants, I’m increasingly interested not only in creating products, but in creating experiences that invite people to pay closer attention—to nature, to themselves and to the wisdom that can emerge when we do.
Once someone experiences Moss Botanicals, the quality, intention and reverence for the plants speak for themselves.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
We are living in a fast-paced, rapidly changing time, and the illusion of limitlessness is everywhere. Technology gives us access to an extraordinary amount of information, but so does sitting in your own backyard, on a park bench, in a forest or on a beach. We can research endlessly, compare hundreds of products, and be presented with countless opinions about what is good for us. The irony is that having so much information can often pull us further away from trusting our own bodies, our senses, our intuition, and our connection to the Earth. I believe the wellness industry will continue to grow over the next five to ten years because more people are being exposed to ancient techniques and practices that might once have felt esoteric or out of reach. As people become more comfortable with these practices, I think they also become more curious and more open to exploring different ways of understanding their own well-being.
Life is beauty. Life is suffering. Life does not treat us all the same. My vision is to connect people to the Earth, to bring lightness in times of darkness, to calm the body and mind, and to offer hope in moments of desperation—all through one of our most powerful and evocative senses: the sense of smell.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mossbotanicals.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mossbotanicals
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mossbotanicals
