HURRAW!

HURRAW! is an American maker of organic, vegan lip balm based in Whitefish, Montana. The company describes itself as having operated "since 2010" [4], the year its balms launched nationwide; regional editorial coverage notes that founder Corrie Colbert and her husband, Neil Stuber, first began making the product by hand in 2008, two years before that launch [7]. The brand built its name on a single category — plant-based lip care made without beeswax or animal products — and has since broadened into tinted colour, deodorant and sun care while keeping production in its own Montana facility.

The company remains active. Its online storefront is current and stocked, and the core certifications behind its organic and vegan claims are renewed through annual third-party audits.

HURRAW! traces back to a personal search rather than a business plan. According to a 2011 profile in Bozeman Magazine, Corrie Colbert — who holds an MFA in photography and follows a vegan lifestyle — could not find a lip balm that met everything she wanted, so she set out to make her own [7]. She and Stuber left New York City for the small town of Whitefish, Montana, and began producing the balm there in 2008 [7]. In January 2010 it launched nationwide, the date the company now treats as its starting point [4][7].

Early production was deliberately small and hands-on. In a 2011 interview, Colbert said each balm was made by hand "from the mixing to the pouring," and that she contacted fair-trade farmers directly to source ingredients, cutting out intermediaries where she could [6]. The brand's tagline from this period was "All natural. Organic. Vegan. Raw. Good."

HURRAW! positions itself around organic, vegan and raw ingredients, summed up in the trademarked descriptor "Made with organic, vegan, & raw ingredients." Its stated guiding principle, repeated across the company's own pages, is to "put the concept ahead of the profit, the collective ahead of the individual," with the customer framed as the focus rather than the firm [2]. The company says it manufactures in-house and produces "as needed" instead of building up inventory.

Transparency is a recurring theme in the founders' own words. Colbert told one interviewer she was "pretty into full disclosure" [6], and in a later trade profile the company criticised what it called "excessive greenwashing" and the diluted meaning of the word "organic" [5]. The same interview framed packaging as an open problem the company is still working on — how to "replace and reduce" plastic and make a better version of it.

The original product was a tube lip balm, and lip care remains the core of the range. Alongside the Essential Lip Balm, the line has grown to include tinted balms and a plant-based lip colour sold as PLANTCOLOR, a squeezable balm branded BALMTOO, a deodorant called BALMUNDER, and a mineral sun product, SUNUP SPF27.

Formulation rests on plant-derived oils and butters rather than petroleum or animal ingredients. The company uses sustainably harvested candelilla wax from Mexico as its primary binder in place of beeswax, with oils such as apricot kernel, argan, avocado, jojoba and meadowfoam, and a single butter — raw, unroasted cacao butter. HURRAW! states that it uses no animal products of any kind and conducts safety testing on human panels rather than animals.

The company's environmental and ethical claims are tied to formal certifications. HURRAW! has been certified as a USDA National Organic Program organic handler and producer since 2015, with annual audits, and has held Ecocert COSMOS Natural certification for its balms since 2017, also subject to yearly physical audits [1]. The company explains that it does not reach higher organic thresholds because its candelilla wax is wild-grown rather than organically certified. On the vegan side, HURRAW! is registered with The Vegan Society and is part of PETA's cruelty-free programme. All products are manufactured at the company's own NOP- and Ecocert-certified facility in Whitefish, Montana.

HURRAW! reached an international audience relatively early for an indie maker. By 2011, regional reporting described the balm as having "a strong base in Australia and Europe, with an increasing number of customers coming from Asia" [6], and the company shipped roughly 50,000 tubes in 2010 against a projection of 150,000 the following year. On its own press page the company lists features in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and InStyle, and ties to figures such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Norma Kamali, though these are self-reported "as seen in" mentions rather than independently confirmed here.

HURRAW! is active. The company operates a current e-commerce storefront with an expanded product range that now extends beyond lip balm into deodorant and sun care, and its organic and vegan certifications continue to be renewed and audited annually. Manufacturing remains in Whitefish, Montana.