Eudora ? A Eudora business is selling a miracle type of sugar this Valentine’s Day.

“There’s no fat, no acne, no calories,” said Ja’nay Besser, owner of the Cat’s Meow. “It’s great.”

Yeah, there’s a catch. It is sugar for your skin, not for your tummy.

Besser’s home-based business isn’t a candy business. It focuses on providing people pedicures and manicures. But the business also is using the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday to launch a new product.

After a year of research, Besser has come up with a recipe for a sugar-based body scrub that she thinks is the perfect gift to soften the skin of that special someone.

The product, called Sweet Sugar Babie Scrub, is made in Besser’s Eudora kitchen by combining three different types of sugars, avocado oil, apricot kernels and several other secret, but all-natural, ingredients.

Last month Besser struck a deal with the Lawrence Hy-Vee Food & Drug, 3504 Clinton Parkway, to begin stocking the product.

Between sales at the store and through her own business, Besser said, she’s making about 250 of the 5-ounce jars per month. She said the jars retailed for $11.50 to $13.

Ja'Nay Besser, Eudora, displays her new product called Sweet Sugar Babie Scrub. Besser recently began selling the product at Hy-Vee Food & Drug, 3504 Clinton Parkway.

The early success has Besser already considering expansion. She said next week that she would begin looking for a retail outlet in the Johnson County area. Her ideas don’t stop there.

“I think it has national potential,” Besser said. “I obviously wouldn’t be able to do that in my kitchen here in Eudora, but I think it has that type of potential. If it gets as big as I think it can, I would like to find some financial backing so I could start manufacturing it on a larger scale.”

Besser said the scrub mainly was designed to be used by people who have dry hands. She said she thought it eventually could compete with some of the larger national brands of lotions and skin care products because it seemed to be longer-lasting than many products on the market.

“It is not like your typical lotion where you have to put it on lots of times during the day,” Besser said. “The softness stays with you throughout the day.”

She said the product also was unique because it was targeting the gift market. Besser decorates each jar with a velvet lid, bow and cloth flowers. She includes a miniature wooden ladle with each purchase.

Besser said the toughest part about launching the new product was coming up with the right recipe for the scrub. She studied “essential oils” in a class at the Johnson County Beauty School, which gave her a basis for starting the scrub.

Beyond that, Besser said, she searched the Internet for ideas and did a lot of testing on herself.

“It was pretty tedious,” Besser said. “I would make up a recipe, put it on, and then drive around town with my hand out the window to get the cold air on it to see whether it would chap.”

Besser decided to begin selling the scrub after she had success giving it away to customers of her pedicure and manicure business. The scrub was included in a gift pack she gave away to customers.

One of the first customers to receive the gift pack called about three weeks after receiving it and wanted to buy five jars of the scrub to give as gifts.

“That’s when I thought I might have something that other people would be interested in, too,” Besser said.