Professional trumpet player turns lip balm created in kitchen into successful business

Professional trumpet player Dan Gosling created ChopSaver Lip Care balm in his kitchen after a student told him about how he used arnica to help him recover quickly from a lip injury sustained in a marching band mishap. (Photo provided) Download image

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Professional trumpet player Dan Gosling began concocting his ChopSaver Lip Care balm after a student told him about his swift recovery from a lip injury sustained in a marching band mishap.

“He told me how he recovered quickly after treating a lip injury with arnica. I had never heard of it before. But because I make my living off my lips, I tried it and soon became obsessed with this herb that comes from sunflowers and was eager to learn more about it,” Gosling said. “I became a mad scientist in my kitchen trying to come up with a formula for a lip balm.”

Thirteen years later, Gosling’s ChopSaver Lip Care with soothing arnica sunflower extract is available on Amazon and at CVS pharmacies nationwide. He is in discussions with other regional and national drug wholesalers hoping to get it on their shelves. He also has a video commercial he made of instruments and ChopSaver ingredients being thrown to him that has received more than 1 million views on Facebook and YouTube combined.

“We’ve come a long way. We now have dermatologists recommending it,” said Gosling, who credits business lessons he learned through the Purdue Foundry with helping ChopSaver grow.

Gosling started small, selling ChopSaver at marching band conventions, band director shows and some music stores. But he found that his audience was more than just musicians.

“I think a lot of people thought if it’s good enough for musicians, whose livelihoods depend on their lips, then it should be good enough for me and my chronic chapped lips,” Gosling said.

Gosling said a major challenge he faced is that ChapStick is so well known that many people refer to all lip balms as Chapstick, just as many people refer to facial tissue as Kleenex or an adhesive bandage as Band-Aid.

Dan Gosling has a ChopSaver product made from 100 percent natural and organic ingredients and another with SPF 15 that has the same basic ingredients with sun screen added. (Photo provided) Download image

“It's one of those products that's become the noun,” he said. “Many people don’t even know the words lip balm.”

Gosling earned music degrees from the University of Illinois and Northwestern University and has been a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the  Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Earlier in his career, he also performed frequently with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Louisville Orchestra. He learned how to run a business by the seat of his pants.

It took him two months from the time he started experimenting with arnica to come up with a formula for ChopSaver. He knew he had done it right when he asked musician friends to give it a try and they came back asking for more. 

He said he began getting more serious about running a business about five years ago after joining the Venture Club of Indiana, a member-based non-profit dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and investors succeed. That’s where he met John Hanak, managing director of Purdue Ventures at the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.

“John told me my business was kind of a hybrid. It wasn’t a startup that needed an incubator, but I was running my business out of my house and there were a lot of things I needed to learn,” Gosling said. “It helped me bring my business to another level.”

Gosling started receiving assistance from the Purdue Foundry where he learned about how to attract investors and how to pitch his product. He got into Amazon and CVS two years ago and he’s working to get into more stores while still targeting musicians.

“I’m still relying on a lot of what I call grassroots marketing to get the word out. The great part of that is we hear a lot from our customers. We hear from people who have lip issues because of a medical ailment or medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, those kind of things that can just wreak havoc on your lips. So it’s nice to hear from people that we are making a difference,” Gosling said. “We started with the idea of, ‘Who needs help with their lips more than a trumpet player?’ Well, we know there are a lot of people.”

Purdue Research Foundation contact: Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org

Source:  Dan Gosling, 877-346-0951, dan@chopsaver.com