From Homemade Oils to Midtown Global Market: The Story of Inner Peace Fragrance
What began as homemade personal care blends for Opal Robinson has grown into Inner Peace Fragrance Minneapolis, now located at Midtown Global Market. Known for handcrafted body oils, low-smoke incense, candles, and soaps made with sustainably sourced ingredients, Robinson’s business centers on dignity, warmth, and community. Her new partnership space allows her to expand while continuing to create products designed to inspire calm, confidence, and connection.
When Opal Robinson was a young mother, she began making personal care products as a
way to treat herself. Once people noticed how good she smelled and how well the products
worked, they wanted their own.
“I call myself the mixologist,” Robinson said. “I was mixing and matching things, just take a
little bit of this, take a little bit of that, just how you make a little soup. You put some carrots in it and some potatoes, and the next thing you know you got your chicken gumbo soup or something. It’s the same thing with these products: experimenting, figuring out what smelled good for me, how it worked on me, and how it drew people. And then I started expanding.”
Robinson initially didn’t want to sell her products. But after seeing repeat customers and
feeling a push from family members, she looked at products that were sitting and thought, “this is God’s resources. Why would I just let this go to waste?”
Inner Peace sells hand-crafted perfume body oils, body butters, soaps, candles and incense.
A couple of things make Robinson’s products different, she said. Ingredients are sourced
sustainably, including imports from Ghana and Peru. The incense don’t produce a lot of smoke, don’t put toxins into the air and burns for up to an hour. The perfume body oils are designed to mix with buyers’ natural body chemistry and can last from five hours to all day.
Everything, Robinson said, is marinated in love.
“Smell goods take you to a place. They take you to a space where you think about something that was good in your life and so that’s what I wanted to create here … it has been a true blessing to share with other people.”
Inner Peace began in Robinson’s home before moving into a building in North Minneapolis.
While there, the business also operated through its online store and participated in many pop-up events.
During a Kwanzaa celebration pop-up shop at the Midtown Global Market, the Friends of
Midtown Global Market offered a partnership where Robinson could have a space in the market that sells her items along with the nonprofit’s.
In the new space, Robinson hopes to partner with more entrepreneurs and hold small
demonstrations.
Robinson said she enjoys being in a space where people walk freely.
“I love the fact that it’s eclectic because I’m eclectic,” she said of Midtown Global Market. “I
love the fact that it’s diverse and different… you get a wide range of interesting people and
people are just drawn to the fact that I’m open enough to share who I am, being friendly.”
Robinson’s heroes, her parents, taught her the importance of good customer service, she said,
which is now her number one priority.
“My mother and daddy didn’t play about business. They taught us how to be professional, but
they also taught us how to be human,” she said.
In her twenties, Robinson’s parents owned a liquor store. At the time, Robinson would
complain about customers until her mother reminded her that those same people helped pay their bills and that she shouldn’t judge because she didn’t know their stories.
“It’s the same thing in my space. I don’t know the story that people bring in, but everybody
needs to be treated with dignity. That’s what’s important to me and that’s what I’ve learned.”
Because of this mindset, people feel comfortable in Robinson’s shop, she said.
“God has provided the space for me to be here just to hear them,” she said. “So that’s why I
like being here. More than selling any of this product.”
Inner Peace is exactly what Robinson wants people to feel when they step into her shop.
“You can come in here, you don’t have to buy anything. I don’t put pressure on people to
spend their money… I feel privileged that people walk into space first and foremost,” she said.
“Inner peace encompasses life and that’s what I want people to feel. I want them to feel the life that maybe some of them may not even have in other spaces, but they feel life and energy in this space. They feel welcomed.”
Inner Peace’s new location in partnership with The Friends of Global Market, 920 East Lake
Street, Minneapolis, MN 55407. For more information, visit www.innerpeacefragrance.com.
Damenica Ellis welcomes reader responses at dellis@spokesman-recorder.com