SilkBalance: A Healthy Decade

SilkBalance turns 10 this year and is celebrating by launching a new product that was four years in the making.

“We’re really proud to have made it to a decade bringing these products to customers,” says Susan Dolnik, SilkBalance director of sales and marketing and daughter of founder and director Joe Dolnik. “At the end of the day for us, it’s all about the health and wellness.”

The new product is a reimagined form of its cornerstone patented SilkBalance formula. Customers can now use SilkBalance as a powder in premeasured pods, called SilkBalance Gems. It is also still available as a liquid.

“While the SilkBalance liquid is simple for people to use, all you have to do is pour a little bit into the measuring cup that’s attached to the top of the bottle, and pour that into your hot tub once a week,” Dolnik says. “Now it’s just adding a gem in once a week. The consumer market is really ready for that.”

SilkBalance is a water conditioner that keeps the pH and alkalinity balanced, protects the spa equipment and the user from the harshness of chemicals and softens the spa water and the users skin.

“The whole formula is designed to make water care as simple as possible for the customer, because at the end of the day customers buy their hot tubs for all the health and wellness benefits,” Dolnik says. “They don’t want to be adding 14 different chemicals and reading small print on the bottles. We wanted to give them a product that’s as simple as possible that they can trust, that works well and that’s the least amount of maintenance.”

Turning a liquid chemical into a powder, with the same efficacy, was no  easy task.

“It’s more complicated than just switching formula one with formula two,” says Yves Campion, vice president of sales and marketing. “I’d say it’s been about four years of development for this product. The challenge that we had was the reaction of the formulation with the film. These films are very sensitive, and we had to have the right product.”

SilkBalance has a full-time chemist on staff, Colin Taylor. “Everything we do is tested and it’s proven with legitimate science behind it,” Dolnik says.

The development of the SilkBalance Gems wasn’t a secret — the company has been working with and talking to its dealers throughout the process.

“We wanted to make sure before we came up with what we thought was a brilliant idea in water care that our dealers were on board,” Dolnik says. “So we’ve had many conversations with them in terms of, do you think this is something your customers will need? Do you think this is something that your team will be able to sell?”

The overall response she says was, “Where do I sign up?” But one concern dealers did have was whether the pods would work as well as the liquid.

“When a dealer recommends a water-care product, it has to be something they trust and that reflects the credibility and the trust they’re giving their customers,” Dolnik says. “We went through all the paces of all the testing to make sure that liquid formula was going to perform exactly the same in the pod, dry formula. It was a lot of time we invested, an incredible amount of money, and now we’re at the point where we know it’s going to be just as successful.”

The SilkBalance Gems will have the same signature orange bottle look as the SilkBalance liquid. The price and dosage will be the same as well — lasting for four months depending on the size purchased. To use the Gems, each week one is put in the filter compartment, where it then dissolves in less than 20 seconds.

“For SilkBalance it was just a natural evolution of the company because we want to be on the forefront of innovation,” Dolnik says. “This is what customers are ready for. We’re not teaching anybody something new, we’re just giving the convenience in hot tub water care that they already have for their other household items.”