LIFE AFTER DEAD TOUR BRINGS ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS FOR FORMER HIPPIE

Statewire

WESTBY, Wis. (Associated Press) -- For years, Sue Kastensen traveled from
town to town in an orange Volkswagen bus, selling homemade lip balm in
parking-lot bazaars outside Grateful Dead concerts.

For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, the salve supported Kastensen, her
two children and their travels.

But for her and many others, that lifestyle ended in 1995 when Grateful
Dead lead singer Jerry Garcia died. Gone are the fans who sold
toast-on-a-stick, tie-dyed T-shirts and free hugs.

But life after the Dead has been kind to Kastensen.

Now she' s 37 and the CEO of Sun Dog, her own business based in Westby. She
manages nine employees while sitting on a large plastic exercise ball in an
office adorned with batik fabrics and, of course, a portrait of a bearded
and bleary-eyed Garcia.

The product? Hemp oil body products ranging from soaps and lotions to "
Sue' s Amazing Lip Stuff."

"I didn' t mean to become a manufacturer, " she said. " Sometimes I wonder,
' What am I doing here?" '

She traces the birth of her business back to 1982, when she took an
ethno-botany class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She said she
studied with a mushroom expert and learned to make healing solutions and
other medicines from plants.

That' s when she honed her first recipe for homemade lip balm, using oil,
wax and peppermint.

"I started making it for my friends and family. I would make it and give it
away, " she said. " People started asking for it, and I thought, ' Maybe
this would be a product." '

Soon she was selling " Sue' s Amazing Lip Stuff" out of her home, and later
her salve made its way to the shelves of local food co-ops. When the
business took off, she was told she would have to find a distributor.

These days, Sun Dog' s manufacturing plant in Vernon County churns out
$500, 000 a year in hemp oil products, which two distributors send to
health food stores and gift shops throughout the United States, Canada and
the United Kingdom.

After a few years on the road with their mother, Kastensen' s children --
Alex, now 17, and Natalie, 16 -- are students at Westby High School.

On the Net:

Sun Dog: http://www.sundoghemp.com/