Pangea Organic's line of natural skin-care products is growing

— -- Making soap with your mom can be simple family fun — or the seed of one of the fastest-growing organic skin care businesses in the country.

For Joshua Onysko, it turned out to be the latter.

He is the founder and owner of Pangea Organics, whose soaps, facial muds and skin care products can be found in Macy's, Whole Foods and other retailers. Sales in the USA and four other countries reached $5.4 million in 2008, double 2007 sales.

Not bad for a boy from Warwick, R.I., who dropped out of high school at 16 and traveled the world with little more than a backpack. At 23, he returned to Rhode Island to visit his parents and saw a book about soapmaking at their home.

He and his mother made a small batch of soap.

"At the time, we didn't think it was going to amount to anything," says his mother, Carol Onysko. "But it has been an unbelievable journey. I look back, and I still can't believe it."

He would leave again soon, taking some of the soap with him abroad. But it wasn't long before he was back in the U.S. with no money. Still itching to travel, he decided to make and sell organic soap. In 2001, he headed for the West Coast with 1,000 bars and sold them in the parking lot where a concert was being held.

Pangea Organics was born, at least in idea form.

By the next year, he had set up a shop in Boulder, Colo. Today, Onysko is working on a seven-year business plan for Pangea. It's one of the fastest-growing organic skin care lines in the country, says Parry Andvik, whose brokerage company, Natural Rx Brokers, helps organic products get into food and pharmacy retailers.

Pangea sells what it calls "ecocentric bodycare" products: cleansers, scrubs, creams, toners, masks, lotions and soaps, among other items. Its niche is in its claim that it uses only "whole organic herbal extracts and whole organic essential oils." Products are advertised as chemical- and additive-free.

Onysko says that hundreds of competitors claim to be 100% natural or organic, but only a few, Pangea included, actually are. The company backs its claims by transparency in ingredients use.