Anne-Marie Faiola turned her pastime (making soap) into a full-fledged career. Bramble Berry Anne-Marie Faiola had spent a year as a corrections officer when she decided that working in a prison ...

Occupation: CEO of Bramble Berry, an Internet retailer of raw materials for making soap and toiletries. Bramble Berry has more than 25,500 customers, primarily small handcrafters, who buy melt-and ...

That month, Faiola—who’d made personalized soaps for friends and family as a teenager—put $15,000 on her credit card to buy a pallet of soap, five fragrances, and a handful of molds to start ...