It was in our house before it was on a shelf.

Abena is the founder's daughter. Her mother went looking and came back with a shea cream from Uganda in a plain jar. It went on at bedtime, then every bedtime.

It has been in the house every day since. Abena still uses it, and her sister does too. That is the whole story of the name on the Glowabe jar: a family habit that got passed along.

A pharmacist hears a version of the same question all the time: what should I put on this? For years the honest answer meant reading the back of somebody else's jar.

When customers asked what we used at home, we started keeping it behind the counter. It sold under a different name, in a jar we were never proud of, to people who came back for it anyway.

Ahoto is Twi for a body at ease. The founder is Ghanaian by birth, and the word says what the jar is for better than any English one we tried. The mark is Eban, the Adinkra fence around a home, a sign of love. The pattern on every label is cloth, tone on tone.

Inside is the same idea with a label that tells you everything: five ingredients printed in full, or one. Black jar for Golden, amber for Pure Shea and Glowabe, and a plain gold lid on all of them, because a logo on the lid never looked right to us.